Orchard of Hope (17 page)

Rain was on every church’s prayer list in the county. Springs were drying up, and people were hauling water from town for their cisterns. The farmers her father had interviewed for the drought story in last week’s
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had said it was the worst dry spell they could remember since the thirties. Back then, it had gotten so bad that some farmers had cut down trees so their cows could eat the leaves. Her father searched back through the
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’s files and found an old picture of a herd of cows grazing on a downed tree. They put that on the top fold instead of the picture of the dried-up pond and sold all their extra papers.

This week’s issue had a picture of the high school on the top fold. Just thinking about school made Jocie feel as if ants were running races inside her veins. One minute she couldn’t wait for the sun to come up so she could get ready to walk into school as a freshman, and the next minute she was scared to death. Her father had told her whenever something scared her to take a deep breath, say a little prayer, and then look whatever she was afraid of right in the face and see if there was really that much to fear.

She could do the first two. She took a deep breath of the almost-cool night air coming through the window and whispered a prayer. “Dear Lord, thank you for this day. For the stars up above. Please send rain for the farmers’ crops. And help me not be scared today at school.”

But the last thing she couldn’t do. She had no idea what she was going to face at school. Seniors and juniors making fun of her because she was a green freshman? Being lost in the halls with no idea where her classes were? Looking stupid?

Noah had told her on Tuesday as they ran the paper that she didn’t have to worry about that last one. He said it was a sure thing and she might as well accept it. All freshmen looked stupid. He claimed he wasn’t a bit nervous about starting school, but she didn’t believe him. He had to be nervous starting a new school.

Jocie took another deep breath and wished she could talk about it to somebody who understood. Tabitha hadn’t. She’d just told Jocie that starting high school wasn’t going to kill her, that she would surely hardly notice since she’d be going to school with the same kids she’d always gone to school with, except for the black kids, and black kids were just like any other kids. Tabitha said she’d gone to school with black kids, Chinese kids, Indian kids, Mexican kids, every kind of kid you could think of. Then Tabitha said she’d been the new kid at so many schools while she was with DeeDee that she couldn’t even remember them all. And look at her. She had survived.

Jocie wasn’t worried about surviving. She was pretty sure she’d survive. She just wanted to know what to expect so she could be prepared. She’d tried to talk to her father the night before, but he hadn’t been much help. He’d been acting funny all week. Not hearing half of what she said. Being gone extra early nearly every morning. She reminded him three times the day before that he had to drive her to school this morning. Aunt Love said he was off “courting that girl.” Aunt Love still couldn’t remember Leigh’s name even though Jocie had written it down for her a half a dozen times.

Something was different between Leigh and her father, but Jocie wasn’t able to quite put her finger on what. On Tuesday night, Jocie had noticed her father smiling a little extra at Leigh as they folded papers, and Leigh had either started wearing rouge or had a permanent blush.

Zella must have noticed something different going on too. She’d caught Jocie off to the side while they were folding papers and grilled her about what she knew about it all.

“Nothing, Zella. Dad hasn’t told me anything,” Jocie had admitted. “Hasn’t Leigh been keeping you up-to-date?”

“She just says things are progressing, but she won’t tell me how.” Zella looked over her shoulder at Leigh. “After all I’ve done to get her this far, you’d think the least she could do is tell me what’s happening.”

“Maybe it’s too private.”

Zella looked back at Jocie. “What could be too private?”

“I don’t know. I’m not the romantic expert. That’s you.”

Zella’s eyes narrowed a little. “She’d have surely told me if he had finally gotten up the nerve to ask her out on some kind of real date.”

“Maybe he kissed her,” Jocie suggested, just to have something to say.

“She would have definitely told me that.”

“Maybe not. Maybe she thinks that’s something just between her and Dad.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.” Zella gave a little snort before she headed back to her spot at the table to start folding papers again.

Jocie had stayed where she was and watched her father smiling at Leigh. An uneasy idea had wiggled awake inside her. Maybe if her father had fallen in love with Leigh, really in love, he wouldn’t have time for Jocie anymore.

A noise from the kitchen jerked Jocie back to the present. Surely Aunt Love wasn’t up already. It was only four thirty, a long time before even her father got up. Then Jocie heard the clunk of Wes’s crutches hitting the floor. Maybe he was thirsty. Jocie went to the kitchen door and peeked in. In the light spilling out of the open refrigerator door, Wes was leaning on his crutches and trying to maneuver a broom to sweep something either under the cabinet or out from under the cabinet.

“Can I help?” she said.

He jerked around, and for a minute she thought he was going to fall. She rushed toward him, but she didn’t know how to help. So she just jumped around him while Wes dropped the broom, wobbled on his crutches, and finally caught his balance by leaning back against the cabinet behind him. “Criminy Pete, Jo, don’t sneak up on a feller like that.”

“Sorry,” Jocie said. “I just wanted to help. Are you okay?”

“You mean other than Mr. Jupiter having to restart my heart.” Wes put his hand flat against his chest. “Let me get my breath here.”

“Can he do that from up on Jupiter?” Jocie asked. “That seems awfully far away.”

“Mr. Jupiter has his ways, but don’t expect me to explain them right now. I ain’t got over the scare yet.”

“I didn’t think you scared that easy.”

“Well, maybe scared ain’t the exact right word. Startled might be better.” Wes peered at her in the dim light. “Except you are looking pretty scary with those wire contraptions sticking out of your head. They some kind of weird antenna to contact somebody in outer space?”

“No, silly, they’re just curlers. I want to look good for school today.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you, Jo, but they don’t improve your looks all that much.”

“I’m not going to leave them in. They’re just supposed to make my hair curly.”

“What’s wrong with straight hair?” Wes asked.

“I don’t know. It’s just too plain. I don’t want to be plain today.”

“There ain’t a thing plain about you, Jo. Never has been and never will be.”

Jocie touched her curlers. A couple of them were about to fall out, but she just left them alone. It didn’t seem worth it to reroll them now. “I want to make sure today. And Paulette says none of the girls at high school have straight hair.”

“None of them?”

“That’s what she said. None of them.”

“So she’s an expert?”

“I guess. More of an expert than me anyway,” Jocie said. “She has a cousin who’s a senior this year.”

“Ah, so maybe she does know,” Wes said. “But back to the matter at hand. You think me dropping the broom has woke up the whole house?”

“I don’t know.” Jocie stood still and held her breath to listen. “I don’t hear anybody, so I guess not.” She leaned over and picked up the broom. “What were you doing?”

“I was throwing something in the trash can and missed. I was cleaning it up.”

“By sweeping it under the cabinet?”

“Why not? There’s probably plenty of other stuff under the cabinet for it to make friends with, and I couldn’t exactly lean down and maneuver a dustpan, now could I?”

“But you could have waited till morning and let us clean it up for you.”

“I could have. And since you’re here, go to it.”

Jocie swept a little pile of white dust and chunks of plaster into the dustpan. “What is this?”

“Would you believe Jupiter dust?” Wes asked.

“I don’t think so,” Jocie said as she let the plaster slide into the trash can.

“Then make me some coffee and I might tell you.”

“Coffee now in the middle of the night?”

“It ain’t the middle of the night. It’s nigh on morning and we’re both wide awake. I might as well have some coffee so I’ll have an excuse for not sleeping.” Wes looked at her in the light still spilling out of the refrigerator. “What’s your excuse? Besides curly hair wires.”

“Would you believe it’s too hot to sleep?”

“I don’t think so. You’ve got the only air-conditioned room in the house out there on the porch with all those open windows.”

“I pay for it in mosquito bites.”

“Make the coffee and then we’ll sit in the dark and talk about it.” Wes slowly pivoted around on his crutches and headed back toward the living room. With his uncombed white hair and long white nightshirt, he looked almost like a ghost in the dim light.

She told him that when she went in to sit with him after the coffee started percolating. He’d settled in the chair, his back to the box fan propped in the front window. Outside the night was giving way to dawn, and the air the fan was pulling in off the porch looked so grainy and gray that Jocie thought she should be able to feel it between her fingers. If a real ghost had materialized out of that, she wouldn’t have been all that surprised.

“Sometimes I feel like a ghost,” Wes said. “A ghost of my old self.”

Jocie didn’t know what to say to that, so she just said, “Where did that stuff come from? It looked like plaster.”

“Good guess.” Wes used both hands to lift his broken leg up on the stool in front of the chair.

“Your cast?”

“You always were sharp.”

“Is your cast falling apart or something?”

“Or something.” Wes picked up his pocketknife off the table beside him and rubbed the bone-handle casing. “To be truthful, I’ve been doing a bit of whittling at night when I can’t sleep.”

“On your cast?” Jocie looked at the cast sticking out from under his nightshirt. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I do. Them hospital people got carried away with their plaster, put the thing clear up to my hip, and it was just too blame heavy. I’ve been taking off an inch or so at night when I can’t sleep. It gives me something to do, and a man needs something to do.”

“I could go get you a tree branch to whittle.”

“I might try that once I get this thing whittled down to size,” Wes said.

“But the doctors must have thought you needed it that big for your leg to heal right or they wouldn’t have put it on.”

“Doctors don’t know everything. And besides, I left it alone till a few nights ago. I figure my bones have had time to knit together enough that they won’t be breaking apart now just because I take a few inches off the top.”

Jocie reached up and, without thinking about it, pulled a couple of the curlers out of her hair. Her head seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe that was how Wes’s leg was feeling. “What’s Dad say about it?”

“I don’t know that he’s noticed.”

“He has to have noticed. He’s been helping you get dressed and stuff, hasn’t he?”

“He’s had other things on his mind this week.”

“Tell me about it,” Jocie said. “I think Leigh has finally caught his eye big time.”

“That would be my guess. He’s acting pretty twitterpated.”

“What’s that? Some kind of Jupiter word? Twitterpated?”

“No, straight earth term. It means his pate—” Wes slapped his hand against his head—“that’s his head. That his pate is all a-twitter over this female he’s noticed. I think the rose he took her last week must have done the trick.” “He took her a rose?”

“He did.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“She didn’t tell Zella.”

“You don’t say.” Wes stroked his chin and nodded a little. “Then things must be getting serious.”

“You think he’s kissed her?”

“Could be,” Wes said. “It’s been known to happen before when a man and a woman form a mutual admiration society. You got a problem with that? Is that what’s given you the wide-eye here before dawn?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Jocie frowned as she thought about it. “I like Leigh. I can’t see Dad kissing her, but I don’t think that’s what’s keeping me awake. I think it’s more school starting today. I guess I’m a little nervous about that.”

“Oh yeah, afraid your hair won’t curl so you’ll look like every other girl at the high school.”

“It probably won’t.” Jocie reached up and pulled out another couple of curlers. She couldn’t feel much curl there.

“Tell you what. It sounds like the coffee’s quit perking, so run get me a cup and then we’ll talk about how you’re going to take the school by storm, curls or no curls.”

18

In the gray light of early dawn, Tabitha eased down the steps to the bathroom. She never made it through the night now without at least one trip to the bathroom. She moved as quietly as possible to keep from waking up the rest of the house and especially Wes since she had to pass right through the living room where he was sleeping to get to the bathroom. But the bottom two steps squeaked no matter how lightly she tried to step on them.

The truth was she couldn’t do anything very lightly these days. In spite of still flipping her cookies nearly every day, she looked like a pregnant walrus with her round full belly pushing her normally cute little inny belly button out until it looked like it might explode. And she still had over a month to go unless the baby came early. She was hoping for early, but at the same time she was terrified at the thought of actually giving birth.

Women were always sharing horror stories about giving birth. How bad it was. How much it hurt. How they’d suffered, bled, even almost died. But at the same time some of the ones who told the worst stories were sitting beside Tabitha in the doctor’s waiting room because they had another baby on the way. Surely if it was as bad as they claimed, they would have never decided to go through it again. When Tabitha had told one of the women that, the woman smiled as she touched her extended belly and said that whatever it took, a baby was worth it.