Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  I opened the door, tossed a stick inside, listened. No movement. The outhouse appeared to be unoccupied at the moment, but just to be sure, I poked my head in and looked around. Long streams of late-day sunlight illuminated the facilities, creatively built from a combination of scrap lumber and road markers. A wrong-way sign was posted on the rear wall, with a reflective arrow pointing upward, and a stop sign with the middle cut out served as a toilet seat. The word Go had been painted on the rim with a pointer indicating the hole. Someone had a sense of humor.

  Hooking the dogs to a crooked nail on the side of the building, I went inside, entertaining myself with a comical picture of Radar taking off with the outhouse in tow. By the time I was finished with the world’s fastest pit stop, Radar was tugging his leash, causing the walls to squeak and shudder.

  “Radar, stop!” I hissed.

  As I was crunching across the layer of raccoon scat on my way out of the privy, Hawkeye growled—not a playful reprimand aimed at Radar, but the real sort of growl. A warning. Radar quieted instantly.

  My senses heightened as I unhooked the leases. “Ssshhh,” I whispered, laying a hand on Hawkeye’s head, listening.

  I heard something. An engine and voices.

  My mind spun ahead, racing back to the Microbus, as I gripped the dogs’ leashes and bolted toward the campground. Everything I needed was in that van—the food, the gas can in the back, my purse …

  I’d hit the clearing before registering the thought that, having no idea what I was going to find, I should have been more cautious. A pickup truck sat idling, and two men were patrolling around my vehicle, looking curiously in the windows. A third was down by the river with his shirt off, dipping something in the water. The tallest of the three, a guy with long, stringy hair and his shirtsleeves ripped off, snaked a hand through the open window and helped himself to a stale Honey Bun from my dash, then reached in again and came out with my purse.

  “Hey!” I hollered, and all three of them turned to look at me.

  The purse snatcher paused, his mouth dropping open as I rushed across the clearing with Radar and Hawkeye barking like canine units on an episode of Cops.

  “Put that back!” My money was in that purse. If I lost it, I’d be stranded somewhere down the road. On the other hand, a few hundred cash wouldn’t do any good if I ended up dead under a bridge. This was the kind of place where strolling fishermen discovered decomposing bodies, the clues to the crime long since washed away by the river.

  “This yours?” The stringy-haired guy dangled my purse from a long, thin hand with barbed wire and a four-letter word tattooed across the fingers. He smiled, a massive chaw dripping from his bottom lip. He was younger than the redneck outfit and tattoos made him seem, and the one by the creek looked like he might still be in high school—a baby-faced kid who’d obviously had one too many brewskies, celebrating the oncoming hurricane.

  Radar wagged his tail and pulled toward the rear of the Microbus, cluing me in to the fact that the third man was slipping around behind me. I turned my back to the vehicle. One thing I’d learned growing up around carnivals, trailer courts, and the parking lots of casinos was never to let some stranger get your back.

  “Yes, that is mine, thank you.” I reached again, and Hawkeye jumped, growling and snapping.

  Radar strained at his leash so hard he started gagging. His tail was circling like a propeller, fanning air against my leg. To him, even sauced-up redneck boys looked like desirable playmates.

  A horn blew overhead, and past the tops of the trees, someone yelled, and then a horn sounded again.

  The chubby kid walked closer. “Let’s go, Dodd.”

  Dodd glanced toward the van, and I seized the opportunity to grab my purse. Lipstick, powder, and a shell barrette fell to the ground and lay there, suddenly unimportant. Throwing open the van door, I tossed my purse inside, reeled in the dogs, and tried to load them through the front door. Radar protested, gagging against his collar and waiting for his usual entry point to open instead.

  “Radar!” Picking him up like a seventy-pound Chihuahua, I shoved him into the seat, then climbed in and pulled the door shut.

  “Hey, Hawkeye and Radar, like on MASH,” the pot-bellied kid observed. Someone thumped the van from behind.

  The back hatch isn’t locked.

  Hawkeye growled, rushing over the seats to the rear window as I started the engine.

  “Eeeewww-eee! She’s in a hurry,” the third man slapped the back window as I shifted into gear. “She ain’t into you, Dodd.”

  Stepping away, Dodd spit out the plug, then peeled back the Honey Bun wrapper, took a bite, and slowly savored it, smiling at me.

  I didn’t wait to see if he’d figure out the Honey Bun had been sitting on the dash for two weeks. I just hit the gas, did a doughnut between the picnic tables, and headed for the exit, determined that anyone who got in my way was toast.

  “Hey, there’s a trotline down there!” the chubby kid hollered. “I think they got somethin’… .”

  I felt sorry for the fish.

  Squeezing past the truck, I mowed over a couple saplings and tossed gravel all the way to the road. The more distance I put between myself and Dodd’s group, the better. No telling what he and his friends would be like after a few more beers.

  On the highway, a stalled car had brought traffic to a standstill. An elderly couple was marooned on the bridge, the woman clutching her hair in the passenger seat and the man leaning helplessly out the driver’s window, trying to solicit help from vehicles squeezing by in the left lane. A custom four-by-four pulling a stock trailer muscled its way into the left lane, then stopped cockeyed at the entrance to the bridge, blocking movement completely. Down the line, horns began sounding in chorus, raucous and insistent.

  “Get that thing outta here!” someone shouted, followed by a string of obscenities that, at the moment, seemed fitting.

  The pickup driver, a big man in a cowboy hat, was unperturbed. Turning on his flashers, he climbed out, held up his hand to indicate that traffic should halt—as if traffic had any choice at the moment—then solicited the help of three teenaged boys from another vehicle. Both lanes waited as the dead car was pushed across the bridge and onto the opposite shoulder. After shaking his helpers’ hands, the cowboy walked back to his truck in no particular hurry.

  I inched up the shoulder to the start of the bridge railing and leaned out my window. “What’s wrong?”

  “Outta gas,” he said, motioning to the car, now safely across the bridge. “I’ll give ’em a ride into the next town.”

  And then what?

  “I’ve got some gas.” The words came out like a knee jerk, not something intentional. Part of me felt good about it, and part admonished, What are you, nuts? You’re going to need that later. So far, there hadn’t been an open gas station since Cap’s place. I still had a little gas in my main tank and then the small auxiliary, but even mostly sitting on idle, the Microbus was burning fuel too fast. “I have gas in a can in the back.”

  The cowboy walked closer, glancing down the road, where stymied motorists were losing patience completely. In the distance, people had climbed onto the tops of their vehicles to see what was causing the standstill. “Wouldn’t say that so loud.” He motioned to the backup, then pointed toward his trailer, where horses were stomping impatiently. “Pull up behind my trailer and follow on across the bridge. Stay right on my bumper so none of them daggum yuppies can cut you off.”

  I eased in behind the trailer, successfully fending off a sports car with tinted windows and making my way onto the road. Crossing the bridge, I thought of my father. Wherever he was now, he would be patting me on the back if he could see. My father never passed a broken-down car without stopping to inquire as to whether he could be of assistance. He was experienced in piecing vehicles back together, so he relished the challenge, but there was also the fact that when you helped someone become unstranded, they usually offered you money, and we always needed mo
ney. Aside from that, Dad pointed out that it was good karma. You never knew how soon you’d be the one stuck on the side of the road, and generally, soon enough we were.

  The cowboy pulled onto the shoulder just past the bridge and motioned for me to move in front of him, so I did. By the Buick, the old man was pacing back and forth, scratching his head helplessly as the cowboy and I exited our vehicles. “My wife’s in a wheelchair. I don’t think I can get her out of the car here. Her mind’s not so good. She don’t understand what’s goin’ on.” The pink of the sunset reflected against his glasses, a filmy curtain over moist, red-rimmed eyes.

  “This lady wants to offer you some gas so you can get on your way.” The cowboy shrugged toward me. “Guess your luck’s holdin’ out better than you thought.”

  “I only need a little bit.” The man’s voice crackled like an old hinge, and he pressed a hand over his mouth, gathering his emotions momentarily. “Soon as we get through town, we’re taking the cutoff to my son’s place. They got a good sturdy house and a storm shelter.”

  The cowboy nodded and started toward my van, and I hurried after him. The dogs met us at the back hatch, Radar wiggling and slobbering and Hawkeye surprisingly calm. Pushing them out of the way, I unearthed the gas can, and the cowboy lifted it out. From the road, passing drivers watched, eyeing the container with interest as I shut the hatch and we walked back to the car. When the old man released the Buick’s gas cap, it let out a hollow, vacuous sound. Nearby, a driver laid on the horn, and the cowboy looked around warily as he tipped up the can and poured gas into the tank.

  Mopping his forehead with his sleeve, the old man dug out his wallet. “I’ll pay you. You name what you want for it.”

  I thought again of my father. He had the routine down pat—act like you didn’t want the money, then agree to take it. “The gas was given to me. You don’t need to pay for it.” I pushed the money away resolutely. My father would have been disappointed, which made refusing the money seem like a victory.

  After capping the tank, the cowboy returned to my van with the container. “I’ll go ahead and put this in your tank, if you want,” he offered. I nodded, and he dumped in the last few gallons, then put the empty can back in my bus.

  Below the bridge, shots rang out, reminding me that I needed to get on the road and put some distance between myself and the redneck crew.

  “Y’all take care.” The cowboy turned partway and tipped his hat. “Y’all hop in your cars and be ready. I’ll get you out on the road.” As I climbed into my van, he started his truck, the diesel engine roaring. I watched in my side mirror as he turned on his flashers, cut his wheels toward the road, and forced his way in front of a Jeep, despite several obscene hand motions from the driver. The cowboy’s message was clear—either let us in or you’ll end up like a junk car at a monster truck rally. Traffic parted like the Red Sea, we pulled onto the road, and the line moved out again.

  Letting my head fall against the seat, I considered the strange dichotomy between the cowboy and the trio under the bridge. They didn’t look so different, but they were. You can never tell by looking, my father used to say. But it had always seemed that people could tell, just by looking at us, exactly what we were.

  The past and the scene on the bridge grew misty around the edges, floated slowly away, faded until I’d zoned out completely, leaving behind the inch-by-inch progress of traffic and the constant storm-tracker reports on the radio, as Glorietta taunted forecasters like a Middle Eastern dancer, her long gray veils licking the waters offshore, diaphanous and feather-light. Ahead, far in the distance, the sky was clear, the first stars beginning to twinkle in the narrow slice of sky between the twin walls of pine. Dusky tree shadows fell heavy and thick, swallowing swampy ditches now lined with empty Styrofoam coolers, Coke cans, beer bottles, dirty baby diapers, and abandoned cars.

  Sometime after the moon rose in the distance, then disappeared behind thickening clouds, we came to a Y where a highway patrolman was routing the right lane off the highway and onto a rural road. No one protested, as the result was that traffic on both roads had started to move again. The rural road looked dark and ominous, just a snake of taillights winding off into the piney woods, but at the moment I would have driven over the edge of a cliff to get moving again. Glorietta wasn’t far from making landfall, and in an entire day of stop-and-go travel we hadn’t moved inland nearly far enough.

  Crawling along with the flow of traffic as the clouds thickened, I felt vulnerable, alone, lost, like I had as a kid when we pulled into a new town, parked the RV, and my parents headed off to find jobs or hit a casino—whichever seemed more likely to bring in cash at the time. Typically, Gil and I checked out the town, spotted the community centers and the churches. Sometime after the age of eight, I’d figured out that Sunday schools and vacation Bible camps had free food, entertainment, and nice people, usually. Sometimes, they’d even send a van through the RV camps to pick you up. My mother was never thrilled about it, but she let it go because it amounted to free baby-sitting and a savings on the grocery bill.

  Being stuck here in the darkness as time ticked by and the storm drew closer felt like being left alone in those dimly lit trailer parks with parents gone and night closing in outside. There was never any telling when they’d come back. No two days were ever the same. Eventually, my mother tired of that life. After Gil died, she solved the problem by leaving my father and me behind, and getting herself a new family. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a place for me in it.

  Shaking the thought of her out of my head, I focused on the taillights in the distance, both lanes crawling north and west toward the horizon like a giant beast of wavering electricity, curving and turning, disappearing into the trees, flickering behind swaying pine branches on hilltops.

  The flow of cars ahead was slowing, the right lane crowding into the left. Gripping the steering wheel, I pulled forward in my seat, stood partway, trying to discern the cause of the holdup, until finally the source of the logjam came into view.

  A minivan sat stalled, mostly on the shoulder, but the driver’s side tires were still riding the line, forcing traffic to ease by in a narrow arc.

  As I drew closer, then drifted by, I recognized the disabled vehicle. The driver’s face was familiar, her tall red hair unmistakable.

  Chapter 7

  Donetta Bradford

  One Memorial Sunday, Brother Ervin preached a sermon about prayin’ from a foxhole in Korea. He came that mornin’ dressed in full battle gear and the whole church smelled like mothballs, so we knew that stuff’d been in the cedar chest since he left the army. He called that sermon “Prayin’ From the Foxholes of Life.” He said you never really understand what it is to fall on God’s grace until there’s enemy fire all around and it’s so dark you can’t see the way out.

  I hadn’t been in too many foxholes in my life. Mostly, I been the sort to take a problem by the horns, wrestle it to the ground, and tie that bugger’s feet so it can’t get up and cause more trouble. The foxholes I couldn’t handle been few and far between. I prayed from the foxhole when my mama died, and when I miscarried three babies, and when the doctor told Ronald and me we wouldn’t ever have children, and as I watched them twin towers come down on September eleventh.

  When the engine started to sputter on Imagene’s van, and I knew the gas was out, and we were trapped on the side of the road in strange country in the middle of the night with a storm headed our way, I was prayin’ from the foxhole. There wasn’t a thing I could do to get us out of there, and I didn’t even have any idea what to do, so I knew whatever happened next was gonna have to be up to the good Lord. Imagene and Lucy’d drifted off to sleep by then, and I didn’t even wake them up. I just turned off the key so as not to run the battery down, closed my eyes, and started to pray for somethin’ or someone to deliver us from the fix we’d got in. Around us, there was nothing but piney woods, and low country, and cars passing by, one after the other. Glorietta was coming onshore, but I didn�
��t need the weatherman on the radio to tell me that. I could smell the air getting thick, and I knew she was headed our way like a freight train.

  Folks around me knew, too, and they were gettin’ desperate, and not a one of them wanted to stop for three old ladies stuck in a minivan. We were in God’s hands for sure. Somehow, He was gonna have to get us out of this low country and to shelter before the rain and the wind came in.

  Lord, I told Him, we’re in a fix. We’re sure in a fix now. I guess you know that, bein’ as you know everything, and we’re not the only ones got problems, but I’d sure be grateful if you’d send a little help our way sooner rather than later. Before Imagene and Lucy wake up, for sure. When Imagene finds this out, she’ll be like a badger in a barrel. I surely don’t want that on my hands, and I know you don’t, either. I admit it was pride that made me come on this trip, when I knew there was a storm headin’ in. I wanted the chance to rub it in Betty Prine’s face. That was wrong. I got no problem admittin’ it. You know how I am when I get up on my hind legs about somethin’. I hadn’t got the sense, God … well, you gave a goat.

  And I got that curious streak, too. I wanted to find out about Mamee and Macerio. And yes, I know curiosity killed the cat, but a cat’s got nine lives, so I guess he can get away with it. I never been one to look before leapin’, Lord, but you always caught me. I know you got somethin’ in mind here or else I’d be panicked, and I’m not. I’m not panicked. I’ll just sit here and wait till you got a minute to …

  A red light painted my eyelids, and then it turned white and got brighter and brighter until I felt it all over my skin, like the warmth from a fire. For a second, I was like the shepherds in the Christmas story. I was sore afraid. I figured I’d open my eyes and there’d be an angel of the Lord standin’ in front of the van. What in heaven’s name was I gonna do then? When I asked Him to get us out of our fix, I had in mind something a little more … regular.