Good Hope Road Page 18

  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.

  It’s a start… .

  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.

  Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly …

  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.

  CHAPTER 13

  JENILEE

  Nate 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.

  Bu
bby. 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.”

  Nate turned his face away from me and raised his arm, laying it across his eyes. “Tell him not to call me that again.” His voice trembled as he spoke.

  I knew it wasn’t the pain that had made him cry.

  I sat on the side of the bed, stroking my hand up and down his arm. “Ssshhhh,” I whispered. “Ssshhhh.”

  Drew came back with a pain pill and a glass of water. Nate was almost asleep, but he sat up and took the medicine, then lay back and closed his eyes. I stayed with him, my hand on his chest as his breaths grew long and slow. Drew waited in the doorway.

  Finally I stood up and walked out of the room with Drew. He crossed the living room and went out the door to the front porch, as if he couldn’t stand to be in that house. I stood uncertainly by the sofa, old feelings dripping over me like thick black ink. I understood why, once he had broken free, Drew didn’t want to come back to this place.

  I followed him onto the porch.

  He didn’t turn around, just stood with his hands braced on the railing, looking past Mama’s oleander bush, toward the hay fields. “Looks like the electric is still out, but there’s plenty of water in the storage tank, so it ought to feed into the house all right. Go ahead in and get something to eat and a shower, if you want to. I’ll go out and feed Daddy’s cows.”

  I wondered why he wanted to get away from me. “I promised old man Jaans I’d feed his cows and look for that old white bull of his,” I said. “He’s been running loose again, getting into trouble ever since the storm.”

  “I’ll go on down there and take a look around, then come back through our pasture and feed Daddy’s cattle. I’ll be back after a while.” He pushed off the porch rail and hurried down the steps and across the lawn, without looking back.

  Just like before. A note of panic went through me. Just like the last time he left.

  I walked to the yard fence and closed the gate behind him as he climbed into his truck. Even though I knew he was coming back, deep within me was the fear that he would leave Good Hope Road behind again.

  My hand touched a piece of paper tangled in the rusty wire of the gate. I pulled it free and stood looking at it. The handwriting was different, not lacy and feminine like that of the first letter, but the paper was familiar, old, yellowed by time.

  It felt crisp and brittle in my hands as I unfolded it and read the words, whispering them into the silent air.

  My Dearest,

  Today, as we prepare for the fiftieth anniversary of the day we wed, I have read again a letter you wrote long ago. The words took me back to that time when there was so much pain, and anger, and sadness in me. You wrote to me that day and told me your love would never leave me, that love can travel on the wind. I doubt if I told you then, or since, or could ever tell you what that letter meant to me. Oh, I know I have left these little love notes almost daily, but I have never said the things that are deepest in my heart. Perhaps I cannot still, so I will leave this note in the trunk with my old uniform, where you will find it someday when I am gone.

  When you read this, know that your love sustained me through the darkest hours of my life. You were the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins. Without you I would have surely bled until I died. You led me forward, a single step in faith, and then another, and another, until I had walked far from the shadows of the past. Had I not suffered the loss of everything I thought would matter, I would have missed everything that truly mattered in my life.

  I am, my darling, so thankful for the many happy days we have shared together, but looking back, I am thankful also for the dark ones. These were the times when I understood the strength of faith and love, when this was all we had to cling to, and it was enough. Faith is a stalwart ship, carrying us through the gale, not destroyed by the ocean, but strengthened by it. Even the fiercest of life’s trials are no match for her sails. Trials pass like a storm. The day rises anew, and we rise with the day.

  We have been truly and richly blessed.

  The letter ended there, as if he had never finished it, or didn’t know how to, or didn’t want to. Had he left it for her? Had she found it, or had it been waiting hidden somewhere when the tornado came, and she wasn’t supposed to find it yet?

  I read the letter again, whispering the words into the still afternoon air. You led me forward, a single step in faith, and then another, and another, until I had walked far from the shadows of the past. Was it possible to walk, one step at a time, away from the past until it didn’t matter anymore?

  Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled, like the growl of something old, and black, and ugly. I folded the letter and hurried into the house. Dropping the letter on the table, I checked on Nate, then went to the bathroom, slipped off my clothes, washed up, and put on clean jeans and a T-shirt.

  I stood in the doorway of Nate’s bedroom, watching him sleep. Leaning against the doorframe, I looked at his clothes strewn all over the room, his baseball cleats hung on the bedpost, his football trophies covered with the collection of dirty, ragged ball caps he would never throw away.

  Every inch of the room whispered of Nate and his silly, disorganized, seat-of-the-pants way of living. Nate never brooded or got angry like Drew. He never got afraid and quiet like me. He never tried to think things out ahead of time, or to plan for what might happen, or to try to steer clear of trouble. Nate dove in headfirst without checking to see how deep the water was. No rules, no fear, no worries.

  Even Daddy’s rages didn’t seem to bother him. He’d stand there while Daddy hollered and carried on, told him how stupid and worthless all of us were. Nate could turn it all off. He’d shrug and say, “He’s just drunk,” like that explained everything. I always wondered how Nate could do that. I wished I could be like him.

  The rumble of a diesel engine coming up the road rattled the edges of my consciousness. Shad’s truck. Tires squealed, rattling the glass in the front door as I slipped my shoes on and went outside.

  Shad’s truck was shuddering to a halt in our driveway with a flatbed trailer carrying a bulldozer fishtailing behind it. Shad threw the door open, climbed out, then slammed it shut so hard it hit the side of the truck and bounced open again.

  Something inside me tightened into a knot. He looked just like he used to back in high school, jealous and possessive, angry most of the time. I’d thought he was different since he came back from Montana. He’d been quieter, less rowdy, less interested in running around drinking with his friends, easier to talk to.

  Now he had that wild look in his eye again as he stopped on the other side of the yard fence. “You could let me know where you’re gonna be! I went back to the armory to pick you up, and they said you weren’t there no more.”

>   “I’m sorry.” What was I apologizing for? Just as in the past, I felt I was to blame for every argument between us. Just like Mama and Daddy …

  Something pink blew by and I picked it up. A napkin from somebody’s wedding last June. Steve and Jenny, two hearts, one love …

  Shad glanced at the napkin in my hands. “Just leave that stuff in the ditch. It’ll blow away in a day or two.”

  “I don’t want it to blow away,” I said. “I’m picking up pictures and other things to take to the armory, so that people can come and find some of what they lost.”

  “Doubt if anybody gives a rat about that stuff when the whole town’s been tore up.” He grabbed playfully at the scrap of pink tissue, and I held it away.

  “It matters if it’s all you’ve got left.” I folded the napkin and stuck it in my pocket.

  Shad let out a sarcastic laugh. “You’re ignorant sometimes. You sure you didn’t get knocked in the head yesterday?”

  Heat boiled on the back of my neck and spilled into my face, but I didn’t say anything. He knew I wouldn’t.

  “Let’s go to my place. My electric’s out of Hindsville, so it’s still on.” He started toward the truck.

  “I can’t.”

  Surprised, he stopped with one hand on the truck door, turned back, and looked at me. He crossed the distance between us. “You know, that’s the second time I come to get you and you didn’t want to go. You’re not actin’ normal, Jenilee. You sure you’re all right?”

  I didn’t feel normal anymore. I wasn’t sure what I felt. I knew there wasn’t any way I could explain it to Shad.

  “Drew’s here,” I said finally, looking up the road toward Mr. Jaans’s place. If Drew came home and found Shad, there would probably be a fight. Shad and Drew had hated each other for as long as I could remember. If Drew found out that Shad was back, and that we were seeing each other again, he’d probably have a fit. “We just brought Nate home from the hospital.”

  Shad’s eyes burned like the coils on a stove. “I’ll come check on ya tomorrow.”

  I crossed my arms over myself. “It’s probably not a good idea. I’ll call when they get the phones back on, in a day or two, all right?”