Good Hope Road Read online

  Especially now.

  “When everything’s gone, little things matter a lot,” Amanda’s mother said. “We still haven’t heard from her grandpa. He lives up toward Kansas City. We’re keeping our fingers crossed and praying.”

  Perhaps the cat and the bracelet are the answer to a prayer. Maybe prayers do get answered. “Me too,” I said finally, thinking of Nate and Daddy.

  She seemed to know what I was thinking. “Good luck.” She took Amanda’s hand, the bracelet laced between their intertwined fingers as they started down the hill.

  CHAPTER 8

  The sun crept lower as I listened to the sound of cars coming and going, picking up bottled water and hot food from the soup line below. In the camp, propane lanterns and campfires flickered to life. The scene seemed almost peaceful, but as I shifted my gaze to our devastated town below, there was no peace.

  How can all of this be happening? The question tapped a well-spring of grief inside me. It isn’t fair. It shouldn’t happen. What did any of us do to deserve this?

  It’s almost night again, and Nate and Daddy haven’t come home. No word of Drew. It’s almost night. More than twenty-four hours …

  Unable to face the pain that came with that thought, I climbed the steps to the armory to find something, anything that needed to be done. Some immediate need to block out eventual realities.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know.” At the sound of Mrs. Sibley’s voice, I stopped just outside the door. “I thought you should be told. Well … because there could come a lawsuit out of it later, or something worse even.”

  “Mrs… . uhhh … Sibley, is it?” It was Dr. Albright’s voice.

  “Why, yes. Mazelle Sibley. Don’t you remember? I told you this morning that for years my father was the only doctor in this town, rest his soul. So I do know what you are going through, Dr. Albright. I do know how ordinary folk will come around thinking they know more about doctoring than the doctor, and that is why I feel it is so important that I … well … I inform you of this matter. You being from out of town, you wouldn’t know.”

  “Mrs. Sibley, I’m tired, and I’m hungry. I’m not interested in making friends here or sharing the town gossip. If I hadn’t stayed a half hour too long on the golf course and then tried to take the back roads to the interstate, I wouldn’t even be here. But as bad as things were today, it is a good thing that I was here.”

  “Yes, truly. Oh, you don’t know how true that is,” Mrs. Sibley rushed on. “And that is exactly why I wanted to make sure you knew that—”

  “That what? If you have something to say to me, just come out with it.”

  I took a step closer to the door and saw Dr. Albright throw up his hands and pace a few steps away. Mrs. Sibley followed him, twitching her nose like a mouse looking for a piece of cheese.

  “That Jenilee Lane hasn’t a scrap of medical training.” She made a tsk-tsk sound under her breath, as if she hated having to tell him that. “I fear you’ve been misled. She shouldn’t be giving medical aid to people. Well, my word, she barely even graduated high school. She might kill someone!”

  I stepped back from the door, feeling as if something hard and cold had slammed into my stomach. I wondered what Dr. Albright must be thinking about me now.

  Mrs. Sibley clicked air through her teeth again. “Well, I can imagine what she’s told you about herself, but the truth is that there isn’t a one of those Lanes who has more than a high school education, and that is only because the school pushed them through out of a sense of charity. The Lanes are the worst white trash in the county.”

  I didn’t wait to hear Dr. Albright’s answer. I spun around with the sack still clutched in my arms and ran away.

  … those Lanes are the worst white trash in the county.

  It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. Why did it hurt so much now? Why did it make my stomach churn to think that she had said it to Dr. Albright?

  Sitting on one of the empty picnic tables in the fading sunlight, I faced the answers to my own questions. It hurt because inside me there was the hope that things would be different now. It hurt because Dr. Albright looked at me with respect. Because, together with him, I had helped people. I had hoped they would begin to see me differently.

  Now, one by one, they would all go back to the way they used to be, and so would I.

  Footsteps crunched on last year’s leaves, and I looked up to see Mrs. Gibson coming. I wiped my eyes as she sat on the bench beside me.

  “What’s in there?” She motioned to the paper bag in my lap.

  Without thinking, I pulled it away. I was used to Daddy grabbing things out of my hands and looking them over as if everything belonged to him. If I acted like the things mattered to me, then he would tell me how stupid that was, or throw them in the trash.

  “Pictures and things I found in our yard and on the county road,” I said, hoping she couldn’t tell I’d been crying. “Just things I thought someone might want back, but I don’t know who they belong to.” I pulled a school picture from the bag. “This one is the little Taylor boy. Are they here anywhere? I found his kindergarten graduation certificate, too.”

  Mrs. Gibson took the picture. “The Taylors come in for some bottled water earlier today, but they’re gone now. I think they’re camping out in the root cellar on their place. But if they come in tomorrow, I’ll tell them it’s here. It’ll probably make them real happy to have it returned.” She handed the picture back to me.

  “It probably would,” I agreed, and put the picture back in the sack. I sat staring into the bag for a moment, looking at the shadowy images of acquaintances, neighbors, strangers. Where were they now? What were they thinking?

  Mrs. Gibson leaned closer and peered into the bag. “You didn’t happen to find any notebooks around anywhere, did you? Nothing fancy. Just little spiral notebooks?” She scratched the pleated lines below her bottom lip, looking worried. “It’s not a big matter, really. Just sometimes I write things down in notebooks, and, of course, they’ve come up lost with everything else in the storm.”

  I met her eyes for a moment over the top of the sack. There was desperation there, something more that she didn’t want to say. “I haven’t found any notebooks yet,” I said. “I’ll look for them as soon as I get home.” Reaching into the bag, I took the piece of the old letter and held it out to her. “I found this. Is it yours?”

  She glanced at the letter and shook her head. “No. Doesn’t look familiar.”

  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 hav
ing 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.