Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  “Of course I … sure …” I heard myself say, my evacuation picture shifting. The dogs, me, Rhea … “Of course she can come with me.”

  Rhea turned her attention to us. On television, the scene had changed to one of gridlocked cars on I-10 leaving Houston, frustrated drivers standing atop their vehicles, trying to see the front of the line.

  Climbing off her stool, Rhea walked to the cash register. “No.”

  Cap held up his palms, attempting to placate her. “Rhea, it’s—”

  “No,” she insisted, her accent, European of some sort, cutting the word sharp on the end. She clenched her jaw, her skin gray with determination, her eyes narrowing so that they were nothing but small brown orbs in a nest of fine creases. “We been forty-seven years, Cap, all the way together.” She turned to me apologetically. “We been forty-seven years. We never sleep apart.”

  Rhea’s words touched some deep, tender spot in me, settled there and felt warm. How would it be to love someone almost your entire life? To be willing to weather any storm, as long as you were together?

  “All right,” Cap sighed, frowning apologetically at me. “We’ll just hang on here, I guess. Maybe the gas’ll run out soon and we’ll hit the road.” He glanced outside, seeming unconvinced.

  His wife patted his arm, then returned her attention to the TV, and Cap followed me to the exit. “Thanks anyhow.” Pulling open the door, he handed me my sack, then picked up the gas can left behind by the runaway driver. “You take this. You might need it up the road. Not much fuel on the evacuation routes. Lots of folks stranded already.”

  “Oh, I don’t need—”

  Holding up a hand, he walked to the Microbus and loaded the can through the back hatch. “Never know what’ll happen up the road.” After shutting the door, he headed for the shop without a word.

  I stood watching him go, waiting as the door shuddered back into place, the glass reflecting the scenery in layers—a gray sky to the east, swaying pines, the road thick with traffic traveling west.

  A minivan melted out of the distance, heading the wrong direction. I turned to look over my shoulder as it drifted off the road and into the parking lot. It paused there, not quite on the shoulder, not quite off it, either. The driver, an older woman with a thin face and red hair mounded into a puffy up-do, scanned the parking lot, seeming confused. In the passenger seat, a silver-haired woman pointed toward the store, and both of them turned my way, checking the place out as if they weren’t quite sure where they’d landed or why there was so much commotion.

  Chapter 5

  Donetta Bradford

  “Reckon what’s goin’ on around here?” Imagene asked, then sniffed and wiped her nose as we rolled into the parking lot. We’d started Steel Magnolias after an early lunch, and everyone in the car was a little weepy—even me, and I was just listenin’, because it was my turn to drive again. Since we were to the point of needing gas anyhow, we’d decided to pull off when we saw the sign for Cap’s Crossroads.

  “There’s an awful lot of folks headed the other way.” Imagene dabbed her eyes and looked out the window at the traffic going west. She had makeup tears clear down to her chin, on account of the movie.

  “Maybe is a funeral,” Lucy put in.

  “That’d be a whopper of a fare-thee-well,” I said. During Steel Magnolias, the traffic going the other way had got thicker and thicker. I didn’t think too much about it because I was caught up in listening to the movie, but now it had me worried. “Lucy, how long’s it been since we checked that page about the cruise?” Since we’d gone through all three drivers, Imagene was shotgun and Lucy was in the back again, and they were running the computer together. Lucy’s job was to click that little picture in the bottom of the screen and make it big every thirty minutes, and Imagene’s job was to have a rigor about how threatenin’ that hurricane looked.

  “Minute ago, when the movie is finish.”

  The worry lines around Imagene’s mouth got deep enough to grow seed in. “Maybe it don’t work.”

  “It’s got wireless intra-net. It works everyplace,” I told her, but in my own mind, I was getting worried, and I’d been that way for a while. The hairs’d been creepin’ up on the back of my neck, which usually means trouble ain’t far behind. Now, pulling into the crossroads station, my fine hairs were standing straight on end. The gas pumps had cars lined up like milk cows at feed time, and I couldn’t figure any good reason it’d be that way.

  “Maybe is a gas war.” You could always count on Lucy to come up with somethin’ positive to say.

  Letting the minivan roll to a stop in the corner of the parking lot, I caught sight of Lucy’s face in the rearview. She didn’t think there was any gas war. We got trouble is what that face said. Don’t tell Imagene. She’ll have a rigor.

  “Let me check the computer.” Turning it toward me, I clicked on the screen, and sure enough, everything was fine. The Liberation was headed out at four o’clock. The hurricane hadn’t gone hardly anywhere all mornin’.

  “Maybe we oughta go on and find someplace that’s not so busy.” Imagene patted her hair and looked out the window, sizin’ up the wind.

  In the mirror, Lucy caught my eye and shook her head. After working together so many years, there wasn’t any words needed between us two. She was thinking, We better find out what’s goin’ on. Now.

  “We better stop.”

  I let my foot off the brake and pulled up near an old van like the hippies used to drive. This one, somebody’d fixed all up. It had a real pretty painted picture of the ocean and some birds flying over, and the words Gifts From the Sea on it. Two big black dogs were watching me out the window. It must’ve been hot in there, because they were panting to beat the band, their noses drippin’ on the glass. A cute little girl with blond hair stepped back out of the way when I pulled in. She seemed like the type that’d be friendly, but she didn’t smile. She looked nervous and scared, like a little child lost at the state fair, her fingers worryin’ a charm on her necklace. The look on her face drilled through me like woodpecker on a dry tree.

  Imagene unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door. “I’m gonna run to the facilities.”

  “Imagene …” I stopped short of mentioning that she just went an hour ago, when we pulled off into an empty campground to stretch our legs and change drivers. “You got your little phone turned on, right?” If there was anything wrong, Imagene’s boys would’ve called … wouldn’t they? Kemp would’ve called, too …

  Imagene stopped with one foot on the ground. “I turned it on this mornin’. Why?”

  Only right then did it go through my mind that the whole morning’d passed and nobody’d called. “We oughta dial home and check in while we’re stopped—let the fellas know we’re just a half hour away from the ocean.”

  “Reckon we should.” Imagene closed her door. Lucy got out and followed her inside without sayin’ anything, and I set my computer on the seat, then opened the door and unfolded myself like a dried out piece of paper. I’d be glad when we were at the shore and on the boat. Something didn’t feel right here. The air smelled wrong. It smelled of the ocean, even though we were still thirty miles away.

  The girl with the dogs scooted around the back of her van to make sure the hatch was shut good, and I grabbed my computer out of the seat. “Excuse me, darlin’. Do you know anythin’ about how to work one of these?” The girl looked at me like I was a couple sandwiches short of a picnic, but I didn’t think anything about it because that happens all the time. “I been tryin’ to check the weather, and—”

  Before I could get over there to the girl, Imagene come runnin’ out of the store, waving her hands in the air and hollerin’, “Good gravy, Donetta! Oh, good gravy!” Her eyes’d got big as saucers and her face was picket-fence white.

  The girl stepped back and bumped into me, and I just about dropped my new computer.

  “Imagene, what in the world?” I closed up that computer right before Imagene grabbed my arm.
“Stop pullin’ on my arm. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Good gravy, Donetta, we’ve drove ourselves right in the middle of a hurricane! That’s why all this traffic. Oh, good gravy! We ain’t got the sense of a goat!”

  I pulled my arm away before she could yank it off. “Imagene, what’re you talkin’ about? The computer says everything’s fine. See?” I opened it up, but the screen was black and the little light on the keyboard was out. I guess I’d mashed the button when Imagene ran at me.

  Imagene flipped her hands in the air and hopped up and down like a toad frog. “I saw it in the store. That thing’s headed smack at us. There’s people from here to Port Arthur tryin’ to get out. Half of Houston’s stuck on the side of the road, and gas is runnin’ dry! That man in there said we’ll be lucky if we can even get out at all. The station here’s about used up their gas. Oh, good gravy! How could we be so dumb?”

  “Imagene, the boat’s leavin’ on time. It said so on the computer.”

  Imagene’s face was turnin’ from white to mad-bull red. “Donetta Bradford, I’m tellin’ you …”

  “The port’s closed because of the storm,” the girl with the dogs said. She was kind of quiet, like she was afraid to get in the middle of Imagene and me. I would be, too, to tell you the truth. “Most of the ships left as soon as it turned north.”

  I felt my heart slide down my throat and land somewhere in the pit of my stomach, and all of a sudden, those hairs on the back of my neck made sense. There was a reason the air smelled like the ocean. A great big hurricane was blowing toward shore.

  The next thing I knew, I was flappin’ up and down, like Imagene. “Why didn’t anybody call us on the phone?”

  “I don’t know, Netta. I did it wrong, I guess. I tried to get that phone out and call Timmy just now, but it’s dead as a doornail.”

  “But the intra-net shoulda said somethin’. It shoulda told us. This computer’s got why-five, Imagene. It’s the newest thing. It’ll pick up the intra-net anywhere, with no wires or anythin’.”

  The girl took a step closer and squinted sideways at my computer. “There aren’t any wireless hot spots around here,” she said. We both looked at her like she had corn growing out her ears, but she didn’t notice, because she was still talkin’. “A wifi card won’t work. There’s no cell tower, either. The computer and the cell phone won’t receive a signal here. If you update the page on your web browser, it’ll tell you there’s no connection.”

  “Up … update?” I choked out. I didn’t know browser, either, but one thing at a time.

  Imagene glared at me, and she didn’t have to talk for me to know what she was thinking. This is all your fault, Donetta Bradford. You came up with this trip. You made us drive down here where there was a hurricane on… .

  I could’ve reminded her that she was the one who messed up the cell phone, but I didn’t see how that would help.

  “Update … like, click refresh?” The girl pronounced the words real slow, like she was talking to the class dunce, which she probably was. I shook my head, and she added, “The little curlycue arrow up in the corner?”

  “Oh, that thang! Hon, I didn’t mash nothin’ extra so I wouldn’t lose my window for the cruise ship. I just left it on all night.”

  Inside the hippie van, the dogs were getting restless, causing a racket, and their owner slapped the window to make them hush up. “Then you’re looking at last night’s news. Glorietta is about ten hours off the coast now. They expect landfall near Perdida about eleven tonight.”

  “Oh mercy …”

  The girl’s dogs kept carrying on in there, so finally she excused herself and got in her car. The two of us stepped out of the way to let her back up and get going. She waved out the window as she left, and I hollered, “You be careful, darlin’!”

  “She was awful sweet,” I told Imagene. “Cute little thing, too.”

  Imagene didn’t want to talk about cute little gals in the parking lot. “What are we gonna do? We’ve drove ourselves right into the middle of a storm, Netta!” She was working into a rigor, and when she got that way, I couldn’t think. It reminded me of my daddy and how, after he’d been hitting the bottle, he’d either go to yellin’ or cryin’, and I didn’t have the first idea what to do to get him to stop.

  I closed my eyes and tried to have a moment of meditation, like we gals learned on Yoga With Yahani. I pictured a seashore, which maybe wasn’t a good idea, what with a hurricane coming, so I switched tracks and prayed instead.

  “Donetta, wake up!” Imagene’s voice was far off for a minute, like a dog yappin’ two blocks away. “The man in there said there’s gonna be floodin’, and tornadoes, and winds way over a hundred miles an hour, and all the highways are stacked up with traffic. What’re we gonna do?”

  All of a sudden, my mind was clear. I opened my eyes and looked over our predicament. “We’re gonna get gas—Lord willin’ and the pumps don’t run out—and we’re gonna hit the road, just like everybody else.”

  “Netta, what if—”

  Lucy came barreling out of the store before Imagene could list off the things that could happen to three old ladies, stuck in the car alone in strange territory, with a storm coming in and all sorts of people on the road.

  “Is a hurry-cane come!” Lucy squealed, then let out a string of Japanese words, and then, “I hear from lady in bat-room!”

  “We know,” Imagene told her. “We’re tryin’ to figure out what to do.”

  A man rushed out of the store, got in his rag-top jeep, and fired it up. The tires burned and spun as he backed that thing out, and I had the feeling he’d mow over anything that got in his way. He looked at us like we’d surely lost our minds. Why are you standing there? his face said. Run! I wanted to run, but we didn’t have much choice other than to get in the gas line, since we wouldn’t be goin’ far with the tank on empty.

  Before the line could get any longer, we wheeled it around and pulled in. While we were waiting, we made good use of the time by praying some more. The prayer worked, because there was still gas in the pump when our turn came, and we filled our tank. Meanwhile, Lucy checked our supplies, then we paid for the gas and hit the road toward Daily. What’d seemed like a little trip that morning all of a sudden looked like a long way home.

  We weren’t on the go thirty minutes before the cars were bumper to bumper, and the farther we went, the slower it got, until it come to the point where we’d stop awhile, then creep along a few feet, then stop again. You couldn’t do anything but keep draggin’ on like that, letting time pass by while the mile markers stayed the same. At the rate we were movin’, I figured we wouldn’t get sixty miles before dark set in, but I couldn’t tell Imagene that. I also couldn’t tell her we were burnin’ gas in a hurry.

  “I think we better shut off the air-condition and roll down the windows,” I said finally.

  Imagene gandered at the gas gauge, which was already down two bars, after just a hour and a half. “Reckon we’d better,” she agreed, and we opened up the van, letting in hot, sticky air.

  We went on, stop and go, for a long time, until finally we come to a place where the road joined up with another little highway. There was a state trooper’s car beside the intersection with the lights flashing, and the poor man was out in the heat, working to mix in traffic from both roads onto one road. A pickup with three fellas in the seat and rifles in the back window tried to cut in front of us, but the officer held him off. The young fella in the pickup wasn’t happy about it one little bit, and the patrolman rested his hand near his side iron to show he meant business.

  We didn’t stay around to find out what would happen next. Traffic moved on, and so did we. Them yay-hoos in the pickup looked like trouble, and I hoped they’d get held up awhile, but pretty soon I spotted them, just two cars behind. Once the policeman was out of sight, they hit the ditch and drove past everybody, carrying on like fools, throwing beer bottles at road signs, hanging out the windows, and cheering like
this was all a big, fun game. A real hillbilly Saturday night.

  I put in a Hank Williams tape and turned it up loud so Imagene and Lucy wouldn’t hear. Imagene was in such a fret she hadn’t talked in over an hour, and in the back seat, Lucy had fallen asleep. Neither one of them moved when we rolled through a little settlement that was quiet as a ghost town, the houses shuttered, stores all boarded up, and gas stations dry. On the plywood, people’d painted hasty messages—No Gas, Looters Beware, No Trespassing, Glorietta Go Home, and on the shutters of a cute little church, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. Isaiah 43:2. The chapel was small, a white clapboard building with tiny windows and no steeple. It reminded me of the little Catholic church where Mamee’s people went. Back then, it was about the only church I’d ever been to very much, because my daddy didn’t favor going to service back home. I hadn’t thought about that place in years, but now I remembered it like it was yesterday.

  The boys in the pickup turned off to the parking lot, busted a beer bottle against the church shutters, then headed around behind the chapel. I hoped they wouldn’t do any damage to the buildin’, but even more than that, I hoped they wouldn’t come back. Being in a hurricane seemed to bring out the worst in some folks.

  I let my head rest against the seat and watched the church inch smaller and smaller in the mirror. In my mind, I could see my grandmother’s hands, the veins blue and hard under sun-freckled skin, her fingers knobby and slow as they slid over the ivory rosary, clutching each bead, her mouth just barely movin’ in a slow whisper of sound.

  Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners… .

  It was a comfort, thinking of Mamee’s voice and her hands on that rosary. I pictured being on the porch with her, listening to her stories, the sounds of the bayou all around.

  As much as I hated missing our cruise, it was even worse to think that I might never get back here and find the answer to the question Mamee put in my mind the night she died.