Good Hope Road (16 page)

We sat in silence for a moment. Gazing at the letter, I wondered who had written it, and whether I would ever be able to return it to its owner. Someone wanted it back as badly as Mrs. Gibson wanted her notebooks. Someone had saved it for fifty years, and now in the blink of an eye, it was torn in half and stolen away on the wind.

The unfairness of that seemed monumental.

The fallen look on Mrs. Gibson’s face echoed my thoughts. Her lips started to quiver, and a tear traced the wrinkles on her cheek as she looked at the haphazard village of tents nearby.

I felt something inside me buckle like a dam holding back too much water, and the horror of the past day rushed over me, loud and fast and relentless like the storm itself. Images flashed through my mind like a black-and-white movie running too fast—Daddy and Nate driving away in the morning, stew pot boiling, tornado disappearing into the sky, papers falling, Lacy beating against the cellar screen, the picture of the baby with the blue eyes, the father kissing his injured daughters. . . .

Those Lanes are the worst
white trash
in the county. . . .

The images, those words, whirled in my mind, punching holes somewhere inside me like puzzle pieces nailed to my soul. In the quiet of the evening, everything that had happened came back, and there was no buzz of activity, no urgent need for survival to keep it away.

Mrs. Gibson laid her hand over mine and squeezed my fingers. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m just a foolish old lady. Don’t pay any mind to me.”

“It’s not you . . .” I said, sobbing, but I couldn’t explain what was wrong.

I felt her arms slip around me. She pulled me close and stroked my hair, the way Mama used to when I was little. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done that to me, the last time anyone acted like they cared. Loneliness, desperation, sadness made me cling to her like a child.

We rocked back and forth in a well of sorrow, clinging to each other as we had on her cellar steps, trying to find a path back to the light.

“Oh, honey, you’re just tired,” she said finally, when I’d cried myself out. “Come on up the hill, and we’ll find you a place to sleep. You’re just all worn out. Things will look better in the morning.”

I leaned on her, numbly following her up the hill to the armory, to a pallet near Mr. Jaans’s bed.

“There, now, you rest,” she soothed. “You just rest.”

I closed my eyes, too tired to argue, my head throbbing where I’d hit the wall of the cellar. The images in my mind grew dimmer, more scattered, blurred.

“Is she all right?” I dimly heard Dr. Albright’s voice.

“She’s just tired.” Mrs. Gibson’s reply seemed far away. “She got a terrible whack on the head yesterday in my cellar.”

I felt someone’s fingers touch the wound on my head. “This should have been looked at. . . .”

Pain spiraled from the touch of his fingers, and I rolled over, throwing my arm over my head to keep them away. “Leave me alone,” I whispered, drifting away from them, back to that quiet, dark place where there was silence. . . .

My pictures were there, all of my pictures, fluttering slightly in the breeze, as if they hadn’t quite forgotten the freedom of sailing the winds. . . .

 

There was a candle burning above me when I awoke. I watched the flame spreading and coming into focus, spreading and coming into focus, as if someone were passing a prism between me and the light. I closed my eyes for a long moment, drifting.

Somewhere nearby, I heard the sound of someone crying. A woman. It sounded like Mama.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again, trying to remember where I was.

The room was dark and silent, save for the spill of moonlight from high windows overhead. In the light, a woman in a white sweater sat on her knees, her body curled around a tiny child. She wrapped the little one in her arms, rocking back and forth, crying.

“Oh, God, thank you, God. Thank you, God,” she said, her voice a mere whisper between her and heaven. “Oh, God, thank you, God. . . .”

I tried to rise, to keep my eyes open, but they fell heavily closed, and my mind started drifting again. A good wind blew me into a calm, quiet place. I floated, like the pink-and-white nightgown caught in the breeze, pictures and papers dancing all around me. . . .

 

The first rays of dawn were drifting through the open doorway when I awoke again. The electric lights were flickering overhead, and the generator was humming, masking the sounds of people still sleeping around me.

Rolling over, I remembered in a rush where I was. I pushed myself to a sitting position, feeling weak and dizzy.

A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped, turning to see June Jaans on a cot beside me.

“Ssshhhh,” he said. “It’s all right. It’s barely even mornin’. Go back to sleep a while.”

I shook my head, feeling lost. “What happened?”

He smiled in understanding. “You just fell out. That new doctor says you got a nasty bump on your head, and you ought to of been resting yesterday.”

“No, I mean what happened last night? I heard someone crying.” I pointed to the center of the floor. “Right there.”

He smiled. “That little boy’s mama come and found him. Lordy, was she happy to see him! They’d lost him from the music festival during the storm, and they’d been lookin’ for him everywhere. That highway patrolman found him miles down the road, if you can believe that. Nobody knows how he got there, or how he could of wandered that far.” He smiled, moving his hand to hold mine.

His eyes, clear and blue against his weathered, aged face, met mine, and I knew we were both wondering how such a beautiful thing could happen in the middle of such ugliness.

“I remember,” I whispered. “I saw her there. Right there with the little boy in her arms.”

He nodded. “She come in the door and asked the doc, had they seen a two-year-old boy, that they had been lookin’ everywhere and checkin’ everywhere around by the lake. . . .” He chuckled down in his throat. “Lord, that was somethin’. That baby heard his mama’s voice, and wasn’t no answer needed from the doctor. That baby like to have wiggled out of my arms, and he started callin,’ ‘Mama! Mama!’ She come runnin’ over here, and she scooped him up. She fell down on her knees right over there, huggin’ that baby and crying.” He smiled and moved his hand as if drawing the picture, the wrinkles around his eyes growing moist. “There was a big pool of moonlight all around her, just around her and that baby. Everything got quiet, and she sat there rocking him. Sat there for the longest time, like she didn’t care if she ever did anything else again.” Laying his head back against the pillow, he sighed and closed his eyes.

“I saw.” A long moment of silence stretched between us. He held my hand, his fingers cold around mine.

“That’s the way Geneva used to rock our grandbaby, Seth.” His words were little more than a sigh, memories finding a voice that came from somewhere deep inside him. “We was in such a hurry when we raised our own children, Abbey and Carl. Then Abbey got stricken with the polio, and she was gone, and Carl grew up, and he started traveling with the army. But when he brought that grandbaby home to Geneva, she rocked him every minute she could. She said she didn’t care if she ever did anything else. She said everything else would keep, but the baby wouldn’t.” He smiled. “Lordy, she loved those babies.”

Releasing my hand, he pulled the covers up around his shoulders against the morning chill. I stood up, wondering where his son and grandson were now. I had never seen anyone visit at his place since his wife died six or seven years ago. In my earliest memories, I could recall my grandparents inviting him and his wife to Sunday dinners. I dimly remembered his wife’s funeral taking place, and Mama wanting to go look in on him later that day. Daddy said she shouldn’t take any food because that worthless old man wouldn’t bother to bring back the dishes.

Mr. Jaans stirred on the bed, and I looked away guiltily, feeling that he could hear the ugliness in my mind.

“You remember this,” he said quietly, sounding exhausted, near sleep. “That part of you that wants to care for other folks is like fresh milk. You might as well pour it out as you go along the path. It don’t . . . keep in a bucket . . . very long.” Letting out a long, slow breath, he relaxed into sleep.

I thought of the jars of fresh milk he brought when Mama was sick. He would set them by the yard gate and drive away. He didn’t bother to come to the house, and we didn’t bother to come out most of the time. We would go out after he left and bring in the glass jars of milk with the cream still floating on top. Mama said the fresh milk healed her more than anything that came from the pharmacy. Now I knew why. It wasn’t the milk; it was the fact that someone cared enough to bring it.

“Well, you’re looking fine and fit.” Mrs. Gibson stepped in the doorway and smiled at me. “They’re serving breakfast at the relief mission trailer. You come on down and get something to eat. There ain’t so much to do today. Quite a few people been taken on to hospitals overnight. They even had to take in poor old Doc Howard, but just as a precaution because he was having some pains in his heart.”

“Is he all right?” I climbed to my feet, wondering why Doc would have left without saying anything to me. “Someone should have gotten me up. Well . . . I mean, I just wish I could have told him good-bye and to take care of himself.”

She patted me knowingly on the shoulder. “He said to let you sleep. He said just tell you he’s all right, and he’s only going to the hospital to keep Mrs. Howard from having a heart attack of her own.”

“All right.” I looked around the room, feeling strangely alone now that Doc Howard was gone.

Mrs. Gibson seemed to understand. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “The mission men are taking care of cooking the meals and handing out bottled water. They called the church over in Hindsville and had reinforcements come in last night. Now they got two trailers and a corn-dog stand down there. Looks a little like the county fair has come to town.”

She gave Mr. Jaans a quick glance as we turned to leave. “I don’t guess he’ll be wanting anything right now.” The look on her face was softer than the day before, as if even dirty old June Jaans had come to matter a little to her.

“Sounds like he was up most of the night,” I said as we walked out the door. “The little boy’s mother came last night.”

“I heard.” She smiled. “Weldon couldn’t wait to tell me when I got to the armory this morning. I wondered why Weldon never come home last night, but now I understand. What with Doc Howard gone, Weldon would be needed here more than ever.” She paused, raising a finger in the air. “Oh, by the way, the Taylors came here for bottled water first thing this morning, and I give them back the school picture of Justin, and his little kindergarten graduation certificate. Lordy, was Justin thrilled to get that back! He thought without it he was going to have to go to kindergarten all over again, and he was mighty concerned about that. His mama said that picture was the only one they had from his kindergarten year. She said to tell you thank you so much.”

“I’m glad you gave it back to them,” I said, thinking about it as we took bowls of oatmeal and a biscuit from the soup line and sat down at one of the old stone picnic tables. Tasting a spoonful of the oatmeal, I thought about the pictures still in my bag, perhaps a hundred or so, and the hundreds more that the storm had scattered.

Papers rattled on a bulletin board the rescue mission men had set up near the head of the serving line. It proudly proclaimed their sponsoring churches and held little paper pockets containing religious tracts, and a larger one holding a dozen or so tiny Bibles. People were reading the papers and leafing through the Bibles.

An idea came to me as I watched the papers flutter, and my heart started beating faster. “Do you think they would have some paper and a pencil in there?” I asked, grabbing a few last bites of oatmeal, then setting my bowl aside, the food half-eaten.

“I suppose they would. Why?”

“I have an idea,” I said, taking a bite of my biscuit, then grabbing it and the bowl. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I tossed the paper bowl in the trash can on my way to the motor home. Caleb was coming out the door with a tray of biscuits in his hands. “You look like a woman on a mission.” He stopped, the tray suspended between us.

“I was wondering if I could get a pencil, and . . . ummm . . . some paper and Scotch tape.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Sure. Go on in the bus. Ben’s in there. He ought to be able to find what you need.”

“Thanks,” I said, then hurried away like I had one of Daddy’s hounds nipping at me.

I stepped into the motor home and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior. In the kitchen, a nice-looking dark-haired man was busy putting biscuits on a tray.

“Ummm . . . hello?” I said.

He started, then set the biscuits down and wiped his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t see you come in.”

“Are you Ben?” I asked.

He smiled, his bright blue eyes catching the light from the window. He stuck his hand out and shook mine. “Ben Bowman. Can I help you with something?”

“Caleb told me you might be able to get me a pencil and some paper, and maybe a roll of Scotch tape.”

He seemed relieved that I hadn’t asked for something more difficult. “That shouldn’t be too hard.” He started opening drawers, fumbling around. “There’s got to be something like that here. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m one of the extra hands who just came over from the church in Hindsville. I don’t know my way around in here.” Finally, he produced a black marker and some fliers for a church revival. “All right to write on the backs of these? Oh, and here’s some tape.”

“Sure. Thanks.” I took the things he offered, the vision growing in my mind.

“No problem.”

I thanked him again, then ran to the armory, an idea blooming in my mind, becoming something real, something urgent. In the armory, I found my bag of pictures near the pallet where I had slept. My hands trembled as I sorted through them, selecting three and quickly taping them to the paper. Beside them, I wrote in big block letters: