Nowhere for Christmas

by Heather Gray

  Apparently content to hear his own voice, he continued. “The thing about skunk is, the critter don’t have to spray you direct in order for it to stink. When you hit it the way you did, the smell got air-o-saul-ized,” he slowly enunciated the word. “That means the stink got up into the air. You walk through air reeking of skunk, and you come out the other side smelling almost as bad as if the little varmint had lifted its tail and sprayed you down personal-like.”

  There wasn’t anything to be said to that, so Avery kept her eyes closed and prayed for the ride to be over soon. She needed something for her pounding head, and, if the officer insisted on continuing to talk about how bad they smelled, she was pretty sure she was going to need some antacids as well.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lawton, OK

  December 25, 1:30 a.m.

  They arrived in Lawton. Gavin, who peered at the darkened city around them, was not impressed. “Tell me again why we didn’t go to Oklahoma City?”

  Officer Sterling shrugged and said, “Nowhere is under the jurisdiction of Highway Patrol Troop G, and the headquarters are here in Lawton. S-O-P says I got to take you back to my station.”

  “What’s the population of this place, anyway?” Eli asked as he, too, scanned their surroundings through the window of the police cruiser.

  “Lawton here is the fifth largest city in the entire state of Oklahoma. It’s one of our – what do you call it? – metropolises.”

  “How many people live in this metropolis?”

  Even from their seat behind him, Gavin could see the man’s chest puff up with pride before he answered, “Almost one hundred thousand people here in Lawton. It’s a fine city.”

  Gavin felt Avery’s elbow in his ribs seconds before her words penetrated. “Albuquerque’s not exactly New York City, either. All we care about is whether or not they have an airport.”

  Officer Sterling pulled up in front of a long white building, low-slung with multiple flat roofs that had a layered appearance. While not nearly as complex, it had the look of a Pueblo-styled structure, but it was white, with the drab look of an industrial building. When he pulled the car into a parking spot rather than around to the back of the building, Gavin couldn’t help but ask, “Don’t you need to take it to the garage?”

  With the first full smile he’d given them since coming across them in Nowhere, Officer Sterling said, “They’re all off-duty at present, it bein’ Christmas and all. If they don’t find the problem with the car until tomorrow or the next day, that’s fine. And if I’m not here when they do discover it, all the better!”

  He let them out of the cramped rear seat and began pulling their luggage out from the trunk and passenger seat. As they trudged toward the entrance, Gavin wondered about the type of welcome they’d receive. Joe had made it plenty clear he wasn’t happy about them stinking up his car, and the smelly travelers had no reason to think the folks in the Highway Patrol headquarters would feel any different.

  Before Gavin could voice his thoughts, a tiny woman came rushing out through the glass doors. “Oh, you poor things! You’ve had such an awful time of it! Who in tarnation would be traveling through a whiteout on Christmas Eve is beyond me, not that those Texans would even know what a whiteout is anyway. We didn’t get more than a dusting of snow here. But that’s all behind us now. You come in here and sit down, and we’ll get you taken care of.”

  Her voice gave her away. “Thank you, Norma Sue,” Gavin said to her.

  The bottle-red hair, pulled up into what could only be described as a beehive on top of her head, bounced dangerously as she nodded and beamed at him.

  “Our car got hit a while back, and I’m afraid Avery might have a concussion. Could we get someone to look at her?” Gavin continued.

  Norma Sue ushered them into what appeared to be an interrogation room, complete with two-way mirror. “I’ll put a call in to the paramedics. They won’t mind coming on down and taking a look at all three of you.” Scarcely stopping to breathe, she continued, “Y’all have a seat in here, and bring your luggage, too. I was told not to let y’in at all, what with the smell, but I can’t see doin’ that to a body on Christmas morning, can you? There’s no airline that will take you, and I couldn’t find a hotel either. The homeless shelter, who I thought couldn’t turn anyone away, said no way, not unless you actually were homeless. Then they’d be obligated. Lyin’ to ‘em didn’t seem right. So I called up Joe’s mama…”

  “You did? How’s she doin’? I was gonna call her, too, about the skunk smell.” Crestfallen, Joe glared at Norma Sue as though she’d cheated in a game and won the prize.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to talk to her. She run over to that big department store that’s open all-night to buy everything we need and should be here any minute now.”

  “Well, if it ain’t my big handsome law enforcing son,” came a booming voice from the lobby. Gavin couldn’t see the woman, but by the deep baritone sound of her voice, he almost expected her to have a full beard when she came into view.

  “Mama! How you doin’? I was gonna call and ask about the skunk smell as soon as I got back here. Knew you’d be able to help.” When Officer Sterling’s mother came into view, Gavin had to cover his mouth to hide his laughter. Avery, who must have thought he was coughing, hit him on the back. Good thing she was too tired to put any umph into it.

  Mrs. Sterling was easily six foot tall with the build of a linebacker, possibly even one with pads already on. Her platinum-blond hair was askew, and her lipstick was hot pink. Nobody’s hair can grow in that direction, can it? As he was studying the hair, she reached up and adjusted it, putting it to rights again. A wig! A platinum-blond wig. On a very… robust… woman.

  Bemused, Gavin watched the interplay between the three Oklahomans. Mrs. Sterling set down a dozen grocery bags on the table in the interrogation room. Then she pulled two pieces of paper out from — well, maybe they’d been tucked into her bra strap — and set them on the table. She pushed one toward Norma Sue and said, “Here’s the recipe for cleaning the people up.” Giving the other paper a shove toward her son, she added, “And this here’s the one for the laundry. If you mix it up, I’ll start doing their laundry for them. Norma Sue said I could use the jailhouse washroom.”

  Gavin, who had been trying diligently to follow the conversation despite his fatigue, asked, “What?”

  Norma Sue came over and patted him on the back. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Since we can’t get no place to take you in, we’re gonna see to you here. Cap’n said to do whatever I could as long as I didn’t put nobody in danger. So we’re gonna mix up this stuff here that you use to clean your bodies. It’ll help get the skunk smell off real good. I’m gonna take the missus here to the ladies’ shower in the jailhouse, and she’ll be able to wash. When we’re done, Joe here will take you and the young’un to the men’s shower so you can both do the same. We’ve got nice clean prison jumpsuits for you to wear once you get showered, too, so you don’t have to get into them nasty old clothes again.”

  “Meanwhile,” Mrs. Sterling said, “I’ll get to work in the laundry room. I’ll be back in a jiffy to collect all the clothes in your luggage. Got me a foolproof recipe for gettin’ the smell out. Never ruined any clothes, either,” she said with evident pride. When Joe blushed and looked away, Gavin figured that his wife, with her own ideas about tomato juice, must have ruined something.

  Gavin and Eli took a seat at the table in the interrogation room while Norma Sue led Avery away. Shortly after that, Mrs. Sterling wheeled in an industrial-sized, cloth-lined basket, the kind normally found in a laundromat.

  “I don’t want to go rummaging through your things. Ain’t proper, you know. I’ll let you load the clothes into the basket, and then I’ll take it from there.”

  Eli and Gavin got to work emptying out the laundry from their luggage and putting it into the basket for her.

  As they got the last of the clothes in place, Eli offered to help
her push it down to the laundry room. Mrs. Sterling laughed and said, “No way they’d let you wander around these halls smelling as bad as you do, but it’s okay, honey-child. I’m stronger than I look.”

  She exited the room, and Eli sat back down. Leaning toward Gavin, the boy said, “Does she think she looks weak? ‘Cause I’m telling you, in a street fight, my bet’s totally on her. And that’s based on looks.”

  ****

  A half-hour passed before Avery came back into the room to the applause of Officer Sterling and the click-click-click of Eli’s camera phone.

  “You don’t smell nearly so bad now,” Officer Sterling said as he greeted her with a smile.

  “My mom in a prison jumpsuit. Someday these pictures will be priceless!” Eli’s glee was tangible.

  “Alright, gents. Your turn.” The officer led Gavin and Eli away.

  Avery had no more than sat down in a hard plastic chair inside the interrogation room when a commotion pulled Norma Sue away from her side. A few seconds later, a paramedic stepped into the room and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Got skunked, huh?”

  She nodded and added, “Before that happened, I took a fall and hit my head. I think I’m fine, but everyone thought I should get it checked out.”

  With a professional nod, the paramedic said, “My name’s Greg. It shouldn’t take too long to figure out whether or not you’re having any troubles.”

  As Greg shined a light in her eyes, he began to ask her a series of questions. “Can you tell me your full name? … When were you born? … How did you get injured? … Where are you now?”

  Avery answered all his questions, and he said, “That’s a good sign. You didn’t have to stop and think about anything. Is the accident with the car clear in your memory, or is it fuzzy?”

  “Clear. I remember it vividly. I almost wish it were fuzzy. I didn’t know exactly where my son was when it happened. Not knowing if he was in danger was scarier than any of the rest of it.”

  Greg moved his hands over her skull. “Don’t mind me. I’m just checking to make sure nothing’s broken.” When he found the lump he asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is your headache?”

  “Probably a four or five,” she answered. “It’s been a long trip, though, and I haven’t had much sleep. I had a headache before I fell, too, so that might be making it worse.”

  “Any sensitivity to light?” His fingers felt for her pulse.

  “Yes, but I think that’s because of the headache. I normally get a little sensitive to light when I have a headache.”

  “Are you tired?”

  She nodded. “But like I said, I’ve only had a couple hours of sleep in the last two days. I was tired before I hit my head.”

  Greg gave her a smile as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm. “It’s not an inquisition. I have to ask the questions.”

  Avery took a deep breath and tried to relax. She didn’t want to end up in a hospital on Christmas Day. Finding a way home and crawling into her own bed sounded so much better.

  After Greg removed the blood pressure cuff, he said, “All through. You have some of the symptoms of a concussion, but I think that’s more coincidence than anything else. Do me a favor, though, and don’t go crawl off in a corner somewhere to get some sleep. If you decide you want to be alone, make sure someone knows where you are. And if you have any sudden changes in balance, head pain, nausea, or your ability to think and answer questions, please take yourself to an ER immediately.”

  “Of course.”

  Greg quickly filled out some paperwork and held out a clipboard to Avery. “I just need you to read this and sign at the bottom.”

  Avery did as she was told then, exhausted from too many hours without sleep, lay her head down on the table in the interrogation room as soon as Greg left.

  “Everything okay, sweetie?” Norma Sue asked as she stepped back into the room.

  “Not too long ago we were traveling through a part of Albuquerque I don’t often go to. We saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart, and I wanted to reach out and cover my son’s eyes so he wouldn’t see,” Avery said. “It was almost like I thought he should be protected from knowing how ugly life can be sometimes. I felt disgusted, too. I didn’t mean to react that way, and I wasn’t proud of it, but that’s how I felt inside when I saw that man with his shopping cart. Now here I am in a prison jumpsuit, and there isn’t a homeless shelter around that will even take me in.”

  “People down on their luck and people livin’ high-off-the-hog got more in common than most folk realize,” Norma Sue said. “Some of them work hard, and some of them never lifted a finger a day in their lives. You can’t be judgin’ a person by their clothes,” the woman said as she reached out and pinched a bit of the bright orange fabric of Avery’s sleeve. “If you want to know what’s goin’ on in someone’s life, you need to take the time to get to know the person.”

  When Avery lifted her eyes to gaze at the small woman, her attention was snagged by something in the older woman’s eyes. I guess it’s taken me this long to get past that awful hairdo enough to notice the rest of her. Good thing she hadn’t thought to judge me based on smell when we first met.

  “Do you normally work the holidays?” Might as well start working on that getting-to-know-people thing now. “Seems as if you’d have enough seniority to get out of it,” Avery said to her.

  Norma Sue shrugged as her eyes shifted away from Avery to stare at the wall. “I don’t have anyone to spend the day with, so I don’t mind. I’m semi-retired, but I try to take the holidays so the younger folk can be with their families. Someone has to work. Might as well be me.”

  “No kids?” Avery asked. That’s when she saw it again. A twinge deep in Norma Sue’s eyes. I hit a nerve with that one.

  Norma Sue smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I had two babies. Twins. One died within the first week, and the other died from crib death when she was four months old.”

  So much grief in such a short time. Avery’s heart dropped into her stomach, as heavy as a cold stone. What do I say?

  “My girls would be about your age now if they were still livin’. I’d be a grandma to some ornery teenagers, I’m sure. My girls would’ve been beautiful inside and out. Every man in the county would have wanted to wed them and raise a family.”

  Avery was still trying to find the right words to say when Norma Sue reached out, kindness in her eyes, and patted her hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. Appreciate what you have each day you get to hug your boy there, ‘cause you never know when those days will be over.”

  From deep within the recesses of the building, a phone rang. Norma Sue reached up to touch a button near her ear. “Oklahoma Highway Patrol in Lawton. How can I help you?”

  Avery’s jaw dropped. The kitschy Norma Sue she’d heard talking up to this point was gone. The woman answering the phone and speaking to a distraught person on the other end was all business, her voice soothing and calm as she hurried back toward the front desk to take down information and dispatch an officer.

  A few minutes later, she came back into the interrogation room. “Sorry about that. Most calls get routed through 9-1-1 these days, but every now and then someone calls us directly with an emergency.”

  “That’s okay. How long have you been doing this job?” Avery asked.

  Norma Sue’s shoulders dropped the tiniest bit. Her smile spread wide. It was the kind of smile you give when you’re trying to cheer someone up, but Avery had a feeling the older woman was trying to cheer herself up. “I’ve been at this job nearly thirty years now.”

  Avery couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What made you want to work with the highway patrol?”

  Norma Sue patted her hair into place as though a few stray strands might make the almost-neon-red up-do too garish. Then she took a breath and said, “I sometimes beat around the bush, but I’ll tell it to you straight, okay, sweetie? Seems to me you can handle it. Not many folks can,
so I do them and me both a favor by keeping things to myself.”

  Leaning forward, Avery wanted to catch every word. She didn’t fully understand what Norma Sue had meant, but she knew she was being given a special privilege.

  “After my babies died, my husband had a real hard time. He wanted a big family, you see, but I had complications birthin’ my girls, and the doctor told me I couldn’t never have kids again. When they both died, my husband decided he wanted a different life than just bein’ married to me for the rest of his years, so he took off. I never got around to finding myself another man.”

  A sad look on her face, the older woman said, “I was confused for a lot o’ years and thought maybe no man worth his salt would want me since I couldn’t have babies. It was a kind of dark time in my life. Then a friend told me I ought to start doin’ for others and that I’d feel better if I did. So I started working for the OHP, and it turned me around. Suddenly people needed me, and things I did mattered. My friend hit the nail right smack on the head. Helpin’ others makes a world o’ difference.”

  “You never remarried,” Avery said softly.

  This time Norma Sue’s smile traveled all the way up to her eyes, making them sparkle like a lake at sunrise. “Once I got over feelin’ sorry for myself, I got comfortable with who I was again. I found out I didn’t need a man to be happy. I was content to do whatever the good Lord asked, and I learned to let that be enough. Every day that goes by, I miss my girls, but I know I’ll see them again someday, and when I do, I’ll get to shower on them all the love I didn’t get to pour out on them while they were growin’ up.”

  Avery reached across the table to touch Norma Sue’s hand. “Thank you for sharing your story with me.”

  “Pshaw,” Norma Sue said. “It ain’t nothin’. We all got a sob story somewhere in our background. Take Joe’s mama, for instance. She’s got a doozy of a tale that goes back decades, but you wouldn’t know to look at her. I first met Laura Jean back in grade school. Even when we were six years old she was twice my size. She took up for me when other kids would pick on me on account o’ how small I was. We been friends ever since. Laura Jean’s the one who told me to get over myself and start doin’ good for those around me. That woman’s as strong on the inside as she looks on the outside, let me tell you. Here lately she’s had a rough time of it. You aren’t exactly seeing her at her best, but she’s still a better person than most everyone else I know.”