Good Hope Road (23 page)

“Actually, Mama, I was thinking we’d go on out to your house and see what can be salvaged.”

“I don’t want to go there!” I blurted out, my voice a hoarse cry from the pocket of grief deep inside me
.

“Mama, it has to be done. There’s rain brewing over there to the west. We need to finish going through things out there, salvage what we can before it gets rained on.”

Tears crowded my eyes. “I can’t, Weldon. I just can’t. I can’t even think about it.”

“Mama . . .” He set a hand on my shoulder, and I pushed it away.

“No!” My voice echoed through the yard. The kids backed away, staring at me like they seen a two-headed chicken. “I won’t go there! I just won’t.” My mind hunted for an excuse, a way to escape the idea of seeing my house. I couldn’t bear it now. I didn’t know when I would be able to. “I promised I would go to the armory to help with the suppers.”
Sorry, Lord, I know that’s a lie, but my heart can’t bear to see that house.
“I was hoping you’d drive me up there, or if you don’t need your truck for a while, I can drive myself. You can stay here and rest.”

Weldon slapped the heels of his hands against his jeans, frustrated.

“Don’t argue with your mama, Weldon,” I pleaded. “Sometimes hard work is the only way to keep a body and soul going on. Sometimes your only comfort is in realizing other folks got it worse.”

Weldon nodded. “I’ll drive you up there.”

“I can drive myself. I won’t be away long. You rest.”

He was too exhausted to argue. “All right, Mama.” He pulled the keys from his pocket and handed them to me.

“I’ll be all right, Weldon.” I smoothed a hand over his cheek, like I always had when he was a little boy.

“I know you will be, Mama. You always are. You’re stronger than any of us.”

I wondered how he could think so.

He turned away from me and gathered the kids around him. “I want all of you to run and get the travel trailer cleaned out. The Andersons are going to come stay until . . . well, for a little while, anyway. They need a quiet place to stay.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Weldon, did they . . .”
Did they find their baby?
I didn’t want to say it in front of the kids. I didn’t want them to know the baby girl was still missing.

Weldon shook his head. “No, and reporters have started to come around asking about it.”

“Oh, Lord,” I whispered.

Weldon nodded, then turned and walked to the house as the kids scampered off toward the travel trailer out back.

I climbed into the pickup. At the bottom of the patio steps, Lacy still stood watching me. I knew she wanted me to take her along, but I shook my head at her and put the truck into reverse.

I tried to put out of my mind the sparkle she showed when June Jaans did his parlor tricks. I wanted to ignore the picture of his hands joined to Lacy’s with that red string, but the image needled me. It brought back all them feelings from the past, when it was Ivy he charmed with his tricks.

You’re not gonna think about this, Eudora. Not now,
I told myself; then I said a silent prayer that when I got to the armory, June would be gone.

By the time I pulled into the parking lot, I had myself convinced that’s how things would be. They weren’t serving supper yet down the hill, so I parked the truck by the armory building and went inside.

The building had emptied out some since I left that morning. Just a few folks resting on cots around the outer walls. Folks like June Jaans, sitting propped up on some pillows, diggin’ through papers in a cardboard box. I stopped in the doorway and glanced heavenward.

I gave myself a mental slap.
It don’t profit to feel sorry for yourself, Eudora. Just go on down the hill and find something to do down there.
I turned to leave.

A rustle of papers caught my ear, and I shuffled around to see pictures taped to the wall, all sorts of pictures. I realized that was what Jenilee had been up to that morning. She was putting those pictures up where people could find them.

But I already knew what gave her that idea. It come from a kind heart and a gentle spirit, one that could forgive the very people who had whispered behind their hands about her all her life. One that could want them folks to have back these lost bits of their lives.

Shame fell over me like a shadow
. I ain’t as good as she is. I ain’t.
“It’s something to see, ain’t it?” June’s voice made me jump like a guilty soul. I turned around, my anger taken away by the wall of pictures, by the act of grace it represented. But when I looked at June, fear come into me. Fear of talking to him without that shield.

“I reckon,” I muttered, feeling like the ground was shifting under my feet.

June swiveled his head to look at the pictures. “People been comin’ all day, just one or two at a time, lookin’ at the pictures, takin’ some that belong to them. Caleb Baker found out what Jenilee was doing, and he started going around town telling folks, and asking them to gather up any more pictures and personal things they found that didn’t belong to them. Pretty soon, folks started bringing in pictures and things they’d picked up. Dr. Albright’s been telling folks to pile them next to the door there.” He motioned to a pile of boxes and bags by the door.

“Well, he ain’t the sentimental type,” I muttered, taking a step closer to see what June had in his lap.

June shrugged. “Could be he figures putting them up ought to wait until Jenilee comes back, being as she started it.”

I peered over June’s shoulder, trying to see into the box, but I couldn’t without getting closer.

“Drew come to get Jenilee this noon. He was gonna take her to the hospital. Turns out her little brother and her father got caught in the tornado in their truck. Her daddy’s in a pretty bad way, but the boy’s all right. Just got a broke leg and some bumps, sounds like.”

“Well, thank God for that.” On the heels of that thought followed the not-so-holy idea that it would be better if Jenilee’s daddy never came home.

June shuffled the contents of the box. “She couldn’t wait to get to the hospital to see her little brother. Left in a hurry. Don’t know when she’ll be back, so I thought I’d start sorting through these things people brought in, pull the wet ones apart to dry, maybe get some more hung up.”

I realized I was standing so close to him, I could feel his breath on my arm. I jerked back. “Well, there ain’t any way you can do that,” I yelped like a stung dog.

June swiveled toward me, looking surprised.

“I guess I’ll have to help ya,” I heard myself say. “You can’t even get up out of bed.”
What am I doing? Oh, heavens, why I am I getting myself tangled up with that old drunk? What if one of the ladies comes in . . . ?

June smiled that even white smile. “That’d be fine, Eudora. That would be just fine.”

I stepped back, waving a finger at the floor by his bed, my insides buckling. “You . . . you put them pictures there when you get them pulled apart. We’ll sort ’em into groups, if we can find ones that go together. If we know who the pictures go to, we’ll set them aside with the person’s name on them.”

June’s face was flushed. “That’ll be good, Eudora. It’ll be good.” He held up a handful of pictures, and his blue eyes met mine. “It’s a start.”

I knew he wasn’t talking about the pictures. I grabbed the stack and turned around in a hurry.

I got tape from the shelf and tore pieces with a vengeance, sticking pictures on the wall. Behind me, I heard June humming under his breath, the deep, warm baritone of his voice bringing back the past.

I finished hanging the batch of pictures and stood with my hands braced against the wall, trying to fight the tide of memories swelling inside me.

I heard the shuffle of shoes near the doorway, and looked up to see Dr. Albright there. I was glad to see anyone, even him.

“I see you’ve decided to hang some more of the pictures,” he said flatly.

I took a deep breath, swallowing the tremor in my voice. “Someone’s got to.”

“I suppose so.” He stood looking at the wall with his hands in the pockets of his stained lab coat.

I waited for him to move on, but he didn’t. Just stood there. What was he thinking?

“Reckon it wouldn’t hurt you to help,” I heard myself bark. “You could get them pictures from June for me.”

I pretended not to notice that he gaped at me. Suppose he wasn’t used to getting ordered around like that. Then he turned around and walked over to Mr. Jaans.

Well, I’ll be darned. You just never know about folks,
I thought.

He set them pictures on the table between us. “Any particular system you have going here?” He kept his gaze fixed on the pictures, and so did I.

“No, not that I know of. I don’t think Jenilee had a real plan. I think she just set out to do a good thing the best way she knew.”

He nodded. “You heard she found her family, I guess. The roads are open again, so she and her brother left for the hospital.”

I nodded, pressing a picture of the kindergarten stick-horse rodeo onto three loops of tape. “Heard that.” What he said made me wonder again about how I caught him watching her that morning. “Reckon now that the roads are clear, you’ll be headed back home to St. Louis, bein’ as you were just here by
accident
, anyway. Reckon you’re anxious to get back to your own family.”

He paused a minute, a picture suspended in his hands, inches from the wall. He jerked his head sideways a fraction, shaking off some emotion before he answered. “No, not yet. I still have something to do here.”

“I see,” I said, but I didn’t see at all.

 

 

N
ate sat silently in the backseat as we wound through the maze of roads heading home. Drew waited until Nate had fallen asleep to say anything.

“Those nurses shouldn’t have taken him down to see Daddy,” he said. “It didn’t do him any good.”

“I’m sure they thought they were helping. They don’t know how Daddy can be.” Rolling down my window, I let the warm summer breeze stroke the side of my face, lifting the damp strands of hair from my neck.

“No, I guess they don’t.”

We fell silent, neither of us knowing what to say next. It didn’t seem right to say things against Daddy when he was lying near death in a hospital bed. No matter how bad he had been to us sometimes, there was still some part of us that cared about him.

I swallowed hard and asked the other question that had been on my mind all day. “Is that why you didn’t want Darla to be at the hospital? Because she doesn’t know how Daddy can be?”

Drew stared grimly ahead as we turned onto Good Hope Road. “That’s part of it.”

The tone of his voice said,
Don’t ask anything more
, but I did anyway. “Does she know anything about . . . us? About how things were, I mean.”

“I don’t know.” The muscles of his jaw twitched, and his eyes were hard and narrow.

I pressed on, in spite of the ominous undercurrent from him. I wasn’t sure why. “Didn’t you ever talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Well . . . didn’t you ever want to?”

“Leave it alone, Jenilee,” he bit out, whipping the truck into our driveway so fast that Nate jerked and woke up in the backseat. “There’s a whole lot to it you don’t understand. Just leave it alone.”

“Wh-what?” Nate muttered, groggy from painkillers.

“Nothing.” Drew opened his door and got out of the truck, done with the conversation. He jerked the back door open and reached in to help Nate down.

Nate shrugged away Drew’s hand. “I can get out myself.”

Drew grabbed him anyway. “No, you can’t. They said no crutches until tomorrow morning, and you’ve got to keep the leg propped up.” He hauled Nate out of the backseat like Nate was still the eight-year-old brother he’d left behind. “Come on, I’ll help you to bed.”

Nate moaned in his throat. “Owwww. I don’t think I’m gonna live that long.”

“Hang in there, Bubby,” Drew said as I slipped under Nate’s other arm, and together we helped him toward the house.

Bubby
. Nate was in too much pain to notice the nickname. That was what Drew used to call him when he was little, back when Nate thought the sun rose and set at Drew’s feet.
Bubby
was a name from a world that didn’t exist anymore.

Drew didn’t even seem to realize he’d said it.

“Hang in there,” he said again, as we helped Nate up the porch steps.

“I’m all right,” Nate panted, his eyes clamped against the pain. “I’ll make it.” His head rolled backward, then sagged.

“Just a few more steps, Bubby.” Drew grimaced, as if he felt the pain, too. “See, there’s your room. We’re almost there. Hang in there with us.”

Nate’s head sagged against mine, the dampness of his tears wetting my hair. “It’s all right, Nate. We’re here. Look. Here’s your bed.”

We helped Nate onto the bed. He drew in a breath, coming back to life as we lifted the long cast and propped it up on a stack of blankets. Finally he laid his head back, closing his eyes, while tears streamed from beneath the fringe of his sandy brown lashes onto his suntanned skin.

“I’ll go out and get the medicine from the car,” Drew said as I covered Nate with a blanket.

“Sssshhhh,” I whispered, dabbing Nate’s cheeks. “We’ll get you another dose of pain medicine. That’ll help.”