Good Hope Road Read online

  Jenilee looked worried. “I hope he’s all right.”

  “Anyhow, Dr. Always Right—oh, heck, I mean Albright—is lookin’ after things for now, though there ain’t much to do since they carried everyone off to the hospitals.”

  “That’s good,” she muttered, but I could tell she wasn’t really listening to me. “Are there more pictures? I can’t stay long, because I have to get back to go with Nate and Drew to the hospital, but I could start hanging some pictures up on the back wall. Maybe we could stand some pieces of plywood or something up in here to give us more space.”

  “I think that’s a fine idea,” I told her. I thought about asking after her daddy, but I didn’t know how she’d feel about that, and I didn’t want to upset her. “There’s bags by the door. We been just dumpin’ things out on the floor, and tryin’ to sort out things that belong together, and pull apart the ones that are wet so they can dry. If we know who they go to, sometimes we just keep them in a pile to pass along, but mostly it’s all shuffled like cards. You just have to hang things up and let folks come look.”

  I clapped my hands together, startling her. “Well, I guess we ought to get to work,” I said. “Why don’t you go over there and see if the ladies have some more pictures sorted for Dr. Albright to hang up high on the wall?”

  “All right.” Jenilee combed her blond hair back from her face, looking happy to have something to do. When she smiled like that, the littlest twist of her lips, she looked so sweet I wanted to hug her again.

  She got away before I had the chance. She hurried over to the garden club ladies, and in a minute she was back with a stack of pictures and other things. She walked to the bottom of the ladder and stood there holding them, not sure what to do.

  “Doc!” I hollered as I went along the wall filling spaces where people had pulled off pictures and taken them home. “There’s another stack of pictures for ya.”

  The doc turned and looked over his shoulder. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Jenilee for a moment.

  She climbed the bottom two steps of the ladder and held the pictures up, fidgeting while she waited for him to come down to get them.

  I paused in what I was doing and stood there watching the two of them, wondering again what in the world that city doctor could be thinking, and why he looked at her that way.

  He smiled and sat on the step a few rungs above her, like he thought to be there for a minute or two. He didn’t take the papers from her hands. “How are you this morning, Jenilee?”

  “Fine.” She pushed the stack of papers upward. “Here. These are ready to be hung up.”

  He smiled and leaned down a little, tryin’ to get her to look at him. “You know, you started a good thing here. People come in looking shell-shocked. The pictures give them a sense that things will eventually get back to some kind of order.”

  I took a step closer, so he would know I was listening. I felt pretty protective of Jenilee, and if that city doctor had in mind to flirt with a girl half his age, I wanted him to know this was a good, Christian town and we didn’t let that kind of thing go on. A few years back, we run a basketball coach out of town for doing that same thing. If I ever got that doctor alone again, I thought maybe I’d tell him what we done to that coach.

  “Thanks,” Jenilee said, and ducked her head. “Well, here are some more pictures.” And she tried again to give him the bundle.

  He pretended to be busy finding the end of the tape. He knew if he took the pictures, she would scoot out of there. “I may not have said it yesterday,” he told her, his voice so soft I could barely hear it, “but I want to thank you for your help. You did a good job.”

  She looked up, gaping at him, like she didn’t know what to say. “Well … I … ummm … thanks.”

  “You have a natural talent for healing,” he said. “I’ve seen med students who couldn’t have done as well as you did.”

  Jenilee smiled a little, seeming to relax. “Thanks,” she said. “But it was stuff anybody could do.”

  The doctor shook his head, pointing a finger at her. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said, then put his hands over hers and slowly took the bundle of pictures from her fingers. “Some people have an inborn gift for medicine. It’s something that can’t be learned. It just happens. You have a way of keeping people calm in a crisis, of making them believe you can help.”

  Jenilee wrinkled her forehead, almost like she thought he was making fun of her, or like she couldn’t believe someone would say such a thing about her. She looked at him for a long minute, wondering whether or not to believe him.

  “I spent a lot of years working at the vet clinic,” she told him. “Then when Mama got sick, I spent most of my time taking care of her.” She paused thoughtfully, looking up at him. “I guess that’s where I learned it.”

  Dr. Albright smiled. “A gift like that comes from the heart. You can’t learn it. You have a gift, Jenilee. You should do something with it.”

  Jenilee shrugged. “I guess I’d better get some more pictures.” Shaking off the compliment like a dog shaking off water, she stepped down the ladder.

  “Jenilee, why don’t you go over and help Caleb and June sort that bag of pictures you brung in?” I suggested, thinking it might be good to get her away from that city doctor, since I couldn’t tell quite what he was up to.

  “All right,” she said, then walked over and sat on the floor beside Caleb, who was holding up an old, yellowed picture, showing it to June.

  I watched them laughing together, the town drunk, the chubby class clown, and the girl nobody ever noticed, and I thought what a strange grouping they made.

  I reminded myself that everything was different now, and I needed to forget my old ways of thinking.

  Everything’s changed, and all the things you thought were so ain’t so anymore, Eudora, I reminded myself. It’s the Lord’s way of showing who is really leading this wagon train. In your life, you been a little stubborn about turning over the reins… .

  I walked closer to see what they were talking about. Caleb wrapped his arm around his belly, laughing as he held up an old black-and-white picture. “Look at this old picture of the Poetry baseball team. Look, there’s Mr. Jaans with his baseball pants pulled up to his armpits.”

  Beside him, Jenilee giggled. “I think these pictures are probably yours, Mrs. Gibson. Drew and I found them near your house.”

  June let out a little cough, snatching the picture from Caleb. “I’ll have you young folks know I was the finest pitcher the Poetry baseball team ever seen. Ninety-mile-per-hour fastball. At least.”

  He set down the picture and held up another one. “Now here, if you’ll look at this old picture of the 1940 Poetry Watermelon Festival Parade, I think you’ll see someone you recognize here in the queen’s court. This one right here, don’t that lady-in-waiting look a little like Miss Eudora … ? Well, it wasn’t Gibson, then; it was Miss Eudora Crawford. And now, if you’ll look beside her, Jenilee, you might recognize the Watermelon Queen here, or the handsome Watermelon King. Those are your grandparents.”

  Jenilee leaned closer to look at the picture, a little gasp passing her lips and her eyes widening. “Those are my grandparents? I barely remember what they looked like, and not so young, anyway. We didn’t have any pictures. Daddy wouldn’t let—” She stopped, realizing what she was saying.

  June didn’t notice. He just went on yammering about the past. “And this lady-in-waiting here. This is your grandma’s sister, Bernice. She’d be your great-aunt. She married a Vongortler and lived in Hindsville. You know, you still got some kin over there, I think.”

  Jenilee sat back, blinking like she couldn’t take it all in. “I didn’t know my grandma had any sisters. Mama never said anything.”

  “Oh, sure she did. Lordy, your grandma was from a family of five or six kids. Can’t quite remember for sure.” He glanced at Caleb. “Caleb, you ask your granddad about it. He’s the preacher over there to Hindsville. He’ll know the
whereabouts of Bernice Vongortler’s kids and grandkids. Jenilee might want to look them up someday. Family’s important, even long-lost family.”

  Jenilee sat staring at the picture, her brown eyes getting wider and wider. I felt bad that I hadn’t thought to tell her she might still have kinfolk over Hindsville way. I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that she didn’t know any of her mama’s family.

  June went on pointing out people. “And look here in the contestants’ row, with the big scowl on her face. That is Mazelle Sibley, mad because she didn’t get picked for the Watermelon Court. And look right here, the Watermelon Princess with the pretty gray eyes and the dark hair, that’s Iv—”

  I had snatched the picture out of his hand before I realized what I was doing. “Stop that!” I hissed. How dare he say Ivy’s name!

  Jenilee and Caleb gaped at me in surprise, but I didn’t care. They might not of known what was going on, but June knew.

  “Nobody wants to hear that old business,” I snapped, tossing the pictures on the side of the pile. “And them ain’t my pictures. I wouldn’t have them pictures.”

  June lowered his chin, looking hurt. I didn’t care. Silence lay over us like a thick, musty old blanket.

  Jenilee pushed it aside finally. “I found another letter,” she said quietly, reaching into the pile and taking out a piece of paper. “I guess I’ll go hang it up with the first one.”

  She stood up and walked to the wall.

  Caleb hopped to his feet, ready to be out of there. “I guess I better go see if … they need any help down at the motor home.”

  I glared at June. “You got no right to say her name,” I spat; then I walked away to where Jenilee stood by the wall.

  I squinted at the writing on the ancient paper as she hung it up. “What does the letter say? I ain’t got my reading glasses on.”

  Jenilee paused for a minute, her eyes meeting mine, filled with meaning. “It says you have to leave the past behind to start a new life.”

  I turned away from the letter, bitterness welling up inside me. If she’d understood all that had happened in the past, she wouldn’t of said that.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” she whispered, her eyes desperate for an answer. “I mean, do you think a person can walk away from everything that’s happened before and be somebody new? Somebody different?”

  I looked into those clear, soft eyes of hers, and something inside me sank. I knew what she was asking and why she was asking it. I wished I could say, Oh, yes, certainly I believe that. I think a body can leave behind all the bad in their past and turn off from it, like they were turning down a new road. I wished I could say that. But I knew better. I knew that the past had pecked away at me all my life, and I never got away from it.

  Every time I thinned the iris bulbs by the fence, I thought of my poor sister, Ivy, because she loved irises. Every time I thought of her, I looked down the road at June Jaans’s place, and I hated him more because he was responsible for Ivy dying. Every time I looked at that oak tree in the yard, I remembered how Cass used to have a tree fort up there, and how he stood by that very tree and cursed me because I couldn’t accept the girl he was gonna marry. He hadn’t been home in years, because I made it plain I didn’t like that no-good, bar-waitress wife of his. That was why my granddaughter Lacy looked at me like a stranger now.

  The past had been with me all my life, following me like a shadow, attached to my body and to the ground around me, so that I never got away from it.

  I looked at Jenilee and thought all of that in a second or two. I wanted to tell her that the past is like a ball of twine. It starts small, and keeps unwinding, until the trail reaches to places you can’t even see anymore. All the things that have happened before are all wound around you like puppet strings.

  “You don’t leave it behind,” I said quietly. “You just do your best to manage with it and go on.”

  Jenilee nodded, looking out the window. I knew I had told her what she had expected to hear. She looked sad, but not surprised.

  “People should.” June’s voice come from his cot in a rustle of sheets.

  When I looked over my shoulder, he was sitting up.

  “People should learn to leave the past behind,” he said again, and I knew he was talking to me. “You can’t plow a clean row while you’re turned around looking where at you’ve been.” He shook a finger at me, his blue eyes hard with determination, filled with sparks, like those of the boy he used to be. “You spent enough hours on the tractor to know that, Eudora.”

  He give me one last, hard look, then turned to Jenilee and held up a piece of paper. “Here’s another letter, Jenilee. It was stuck to the back of one of them old pictures. Go hang it on the wall by the other two. It might do folks some good.” He looked at me when he said folks.

  Jenilee, of course, didn’t know his meaning. Only June and I knew that long-ago part of our past. Only he and I felt those wounds that were still so fresh.

  Jenilee moved to his bedside and reached for the letter. June put his hand over hers lightly, not holding her there, but she didn’t pull back. Instead, she looked at him like a child might look at a grandparent—like he was old, and wise, and important.

  “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t become somethin’ new. You’re like one of them spring calves, all tangled up inside your mama, and tryin’ hard to get out and find your feet. You got a long ways to go in your life. You find your feet, and then look where you want to go, and start runnin’. Don’t look back.”

  Jenilee nodded, sighing. “I don’t know where I want to go.” She pulled her hand away from June’s, looking embarrassed by all his sentimental rambling.

  June smiled, groaning under his breath as he lay back down. “You’ll figure it out. Just keep goin’ in a straight row, and don’t look back, all right?”

  “All right,” she said, then walked across the room and hung the letter up with the other two. She run her hands up and down her arms, reading the words to herself; then she turned toward the door. “I better get home so we can go to the hospital,” she said, but the look on her face told me she was about to cry, and she didn’t want us to see it.

  The look on her face stayed with me for a long time after she left. I wondered about her while I hung pictures on the wall. As the morning wore on, the crowd around the wall grew larger, folks wandering in one or two at a time, looking at the pictures, talking about what the pictures made them remember.

  I wished Jenilee could of been there to see it. I wondered what she would find at the hospital—if that father of hers would be awake, and if she would be glad about that. I wondered if she was afraid he wouldn’t recover, or afraid he would.

  I thought again about what might of gone on in that house with the bushes grown over the windows to make Jenilee so quiet and shy and afraid of everybody.

  Mazelle Sibley come in at noontime with one of her sandwich trays. She looked at the picture wall with narrow eyes. I reckon she didn’t like it because it was Jenilee’s idea.

  “Well, I’ve just been down giving sandwiches to the sheriff’s crew. Poor Mrs. Anderson is there with them, still hoping to find her baby. I gave her a sandwich and a Pepsi-Cola, thought a little food might be a comfort.”

  “Uh-huh,” I answered, pretending to be busy. I was hoping she’d move on.

  “Did you hear there are reporters in town asking about the baby? They’re going to broadcast the story on the news. I told them what I knew, of course. Told them what a shame it was that the poor mother had to come in here and see her baby girl’s picture hanging on the wall of the armory. Honestly, I can’t imagine what that Jenilee Lane could be thinking, putting that picture up there. Doesn’t she have any sense? How horrible for poor Mrs. Anderson.”

  “Jenilee didn’t know who the picture belonged to,” I said flatly. “No reason she would know it was the Anderson baby.”

  Mazelle tipped her chin up, making a tsk-tsk sound. “Don’t imagine you can expect—�
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  A string of curse words outside the door cut her off.

  “Oh, my word!” She gasped, stepping out of the way just in time to keep from being run over by Shad Bell, of all people.

  He let out another string of curse words as he bumped into the doorframe and stumbled through the door. He stopped just inside, his fists wadded up at his sides like he was spoiling for a fight. He walked past us and said something to June.

  June raised his hands into the air, palms-up, looking confused.

  I hurried over to see what was going on. “Shad Bell, you leave June alone,” I said. “This is a hospital. You ain’t supposed to be in here.”

  Shad turned to face me, stumbling against June’s bed so that I thought he might fall right down on top of the man. “Where’s Jenilee?” His words were slurred. He turned his face toward me, and I saw that he was half-covered in blood, dripping from a fresh gash in his forehead.

  I grabbed his arm to keep him from falling. “My Lord, Shad, what in the world kind of idiot thing have you done to yourself?”

  Behind me, Mazelle said, “Oh, my!” again, then scooted over to where the garden club ladies were sitting.

  Shad drifted to one side, then righted himself again and looked at me, his eyes cloudy with liquor. “I’m trying to find Jenilee,” he slurred, the words barely understandable.

  My mind put two and two together, and I realized I was right about the two of them. Jenilee was mixed up with him again. I didn’t like that idea at all. The only thing a boy like Shad Bell could bring to Jenilee was trouble.

  “Well, she ain’t here.” I held on to his arm to keep him upright. In the bed, June raised his hands up like he was going to catch Shad if he fell. Fat chance of that. I knew if Shad fell on that bed, June would be squished flatter than a fritter.

  I pulled Shad’s arm and got him to step away. The blood from his hand dripped on my arm, and I looked at that cut in his forehead. “Good gravy, what did you do to yourself, Shad Bell?” I asked again.

  Shad wiped the blood away with the greasy, wadded-up T-shirt he had in his other hand. “I run my truck into the ditch outside of town.” His eyes started to close, and I give him a quick shake to wake him up. He jerked, and went on talking, the words mixed together like garble on a radio. “I was bringin’ the dozer … into town … to see Jen … Jenilee.”