Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  Hardly, I thought, but I didn’t say it. The truth was that my handle came on a whim, like everything else. “My father named me after the sound a bird was making when he walked out of the hospital. He heard kai, kai, kai, and he thought, why not? I did better than my brother, Gil, though. We were in Lousiana when he was born, and my father named him after a bullfrog.”

  “I think those are good names. They mean somethin’.” She nodded to punctuate. “Like people in a book would have. I always wished I had a name like that. So where’s your daddy live now?”

  “I have no idea, really.”

  The answer seemed to surprise, or disappoint her, or both. “It’s not good to lose touch with your people. I wish I’da kept better contact with my mama’s folk. I guess I figured there’d always be time.”

  I contemplated the idea that perhaps I’d end up someday regretting the things I hadn’t done. “There were issues after my parents split, and eventually we all lost touch.” It was an uncomfortably honest admission, something I normally wouldn’t have shared. “But it’s fine. Life goes on, you know?”

  Nodding, she pulled me close, then cradled my head under hers. “Well, you just never know, darlin’. The Lord has it all in mind, though. Everything works for our good.”

  I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have an answer. In my mind, God was a blackjack dealer, tossing out cards at random. They landed where they landed and you did the best you could with what you got.

  Closing my eyes, I relaxed, letting weariness slip over me. Far back in my mind, I remembered sitting with my mother like this. We were on the beach in Galveston. She’d just told me the truth about Gil. I didn’t believe it, so I didn’t cry. I pretended to so she would stay there with me longer. It felt good to have her all to myself. Most of the time, she and my father were so wrapped up in each other, that it was like Gil and I were an inconvenience.

  I’d always wondered what it would be like to feel that way about someone, or to have someone else feel that way about you—to have your eyes so full of one person you didn’t see anything else in the world. But I’d always considered that emotion from a distance—the way you picture living in a mansion or wearing the Hope diamond. A picture so far from reality that you can dream about it without setting yourself up for disappointment, because really, deep down, you know it’ll never happen.

  Donetta sighed, and her breaths grew long and even.

  It’s not good to lose touch with your people… .

  Would I end up like Donetta someday, trying to track down a family I hadn’t seen in fifty-plus years? I hadn’t really considered the question of whether I ever intended to search for my father, or go out to Arizona, knock on my mother’s door, and see what she’d say when she opened it. I’d kept myself busy with other things, thought of time as an endless highway with plenty of room for side trips somewhere down the road. How would I feel if I ended up in Donetta’s position—with lingering questions and no one left to answer?

  The issue circled in my mind while the shadows lengthened in the building, my thoughts stretching with them, drifting as in the distance the chain saws chewed through another piece of wood… .

  It seemed only a moment later that Donetta was standing over me, shaking me awake. My body was stiff and leaden, so I knew I’d been dozing against the wall for a while. “Listen at that! You hear it? That’s an engine! Somebody’s comin’!”

  I staggered to my feet as Donetta hurried to rouse Imagene and Lucy. Around the room, others had caught the sound and everyone was moving toward the door, listening and whispering, as if too much chatter might make the hum of rescue disappear.

  Mona’s voice blasted in from the parking lot like a raucous wind. “Praise the Lawd! We’re saved!”

  “What is it?” someone near me called. For a moment, we were wedged just inside the doorway, trapped behind Obeline as she tried to navigate the uneven threshold.

  By the time we made it to the parking lot and around the bus, a vehicle was cresting the hill—I guessed you’d have to call it a vehicle. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie gone wrong. It had the cab of a truck, with a huge winch on the front like the ones carnivals used to raise the rides. In the back, a flatbed was loaded down with toolboxes, chain saws, tanks, and men. They were riding on a tall A-frame that held what looked like a giant corkscrew swinging back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.

  “Gal-ee! What ’n the worl’?” Bluejay gasped, pointing at the truck.

  “It’s the Daily men!” Donetta squealed. “There’s my boy, right up top!” She ran toward the road, fanning her hands like a castaway and calling out, “We’re here! We’re down here!”

  Straddling the A-frame of the corkscrew like a circus rider, a man with dark hair lifted a chain saw into the air in a triumphant wave as Donetta splashed through a mud puddle in a stiff-legged run, gesticulating wildly to welcome the truck into the parking lot.

  The Holy Ghost crowd backed up uncertainly, murmurs traveling among them as the strange vehicle crossed the muddy lot and rolled to a stop, the brakes squealing out a complaint and the engine backfiring.

  Running alongside the truck, Donetta shaded her eyes and peered at the man atop the corkscrew. When the vehicle finally wheezed into silence, she pointed a finger and shook it at him. “Kempner Rollins Eldridge, you get down from that post-hole digger right now. You’re gonna slip off there and crack your fool head open like a hen egg, and then where’ll we be?”

  Chapter 13

  Donetta Bradford

  I don’t think I ever been so proud in my life as when the Daily boys come over the hill on Pearly Parsons’ fencing truck with the post-hole digger swingin’ in the back. I feel sure I heard a cavalry bugle call playing in the background. Those boys looked so good to me, riding that truck with their chain saws, and shovels, and ropes, I coulda kissed every one of them. They had Ernest along, too, so I knew he’d got in touch with them somehow and led them right to us.

  When that truck hooked into the parkin’ lot, I saw Kemp, fifteen foot in the air on top of that post auger, and I coulda wrung his neck. I hollered at him, and he just kicked a leg over and swung off of that thing by one arm—the pitchin’ arm that’d had all the surgeries, no less. He landed in the bed of the truck still holding the chain saw and about give me a heart attack, as usual.

  I didn’t know whether to kiss that boy on the cheek or swat him, but finally I just opened my arms and ran his way. He lifted me plumb off the ground with a one-handed hug. One thing about Kemp, even back in high school, when all the other teenage boys would act like they didn’t even know their own mamas, Kemp was never afraid to give his old auntie a hug.

  All around me, I could hear other Daily folk getting off the truck. There was Doyle Banes, stuttering out a story about how they’d cut through oak trees big around as fifty-gallon drums and dragged half a barn off the road with the winch on the post truck. Pearly Parsons was bragging about how that truck’d once pulled the county road service dozer out of a sinkhole. One of Pearly’s helpers, Julio, was talking in Spanish, saying Alamo gordo, which I think meant big tree, and Buddy Ray Baldridge was letting everyone know he was with the Daily Sheriff’s Department, and then there was Bob Turner, and Otis Charles Potts, who could probably lift a tree off the road with his bare hands, and my brother, Frank. It felt like the whole town’d dropped whatever was happening and come to rescue us.

  I started to cry right there on the spot, and Imagene must’ve been feeling about the same way, because when Kemp let me go and I looked around through the blur, Imagene was hugging Bob Turner. Bob, of all people! Imagene and Bob been arguing behind the counter at the Daily Café for fifty years. I’d of said them hugging was about as likely as hogs in toe shoes.

  After Bob let her go, Frank come over and grabbed Imagene with both arms, and you coulda fried an egg on her cheeks afterward. Her and Frank just stood there looking at each other, all doe-eyed.

  Right about then, it come to me t
o wonder how in the world they’d got there. Surely they didn’t ride all that way on the post truck. I turned back to Kemp with a million questions runnin’ through my mind and tumblin’ out my mouth. “How’d y’all get here? Where’d you find Ernest? Did he tell you where we were—he must’ve, I guess. Y’all didn’t ride all the way from Daily in the back of the post truck, surely?” I looked around for more vehicles, but there was only Pearly’s.

  “And who do you think you are, Kempner Rollins, riding up there on that auger—Rambo Balboa? And with a chain saw! That truck could hit a bump and you’d be knocked off quicker than you can say splat, or you could get caught in a electric line and hung up like the wash. Ya’ll didn’t drive over any down power lines, I hope?” All the possible pictures flashed through my mind and my head went light and cloudy. If anything would’ve happened to the Daily boys because they had to come rescue me, I don’t know what I’da done. “How’d y’all get here so fast? Everything all right back home? Y’all didn’t have any tornados? We had …”

  Kemp grabbed me by the shoulders, and I realized I was hoppin’ around like a field mouse on a hot tar patch. “Aunt Netta, one question at a time, all right?” He grinned at me, and I remembered how much I loved that smile. It got him away with murder when he was little. He was a stinker, but cute as a bug when he smiled. “We left about nine o’clock this morning, when the first call came through from Ernest. We still weren’t sure exactly where y’all were, but he gave us enough information to get started on, so we gathered some equipment and gas cans, and whoever we could find, and we headed this way. In the meantime, Ernest kept walking, looking for road markers or landmarks that’d help us find the place on the map. You’d think it wouldn’t take all day to make a trip less than four hours from home, but between the trees and power lines down, and the roads that are flooded …”

  “You drove through a flood with electric lines in it? What in land’s name were you thinkin’ about? Y’all coulda got rolled over in a ditch, or carried off in a creek, or—”

  “We drove through a little water. That’s all,” Kemp cut me off, rollin’ his eyes. “This county road was slow going, so we left the rest of the trucks a few miles up and worked our way through on the post truck to save gas.” He used the chain saw to point back the way they come.

  “Put that thing down,” I told him, and he looked at the saw like he’d forgot it was there. “Kempner, you are strummin’ my nerves, and I’m down to my last one after that storm, let me tell ya.”

  Laughing deep in his throat, he set that machine on the bed of the truck, then kissed me on the head. He could only get away with that because he was six foot three. “Aunt Netta, you’re always on your last nerve.” He grinned again. “How are Imagene and Lucy?”

  “They’re on their last nerve, too. We left Daily wanting us a adventure, and we sure got one. We were stuck on the side of the road, and then a real sweet little gal stopped and picked us up with her two dogs. Kai’s her name, after a bird. We went on in a old Microbus—those ones like the hippies had? But the tire got flat. Then we heard someone singin’ in the woods and a old hound dog, and we hiked off to the Holy Ghost folks, but the storm blew in, and I’ll tell you, I thought we’d get hit by lightnin’ or squashed flat by a tree, comin’ through the woods. I ain’t ever prayed so hard in my life, but then we got on the bus, and …” The words kept running like water from a downspout.

  It took me a minute to notice Kemp wasn’t noddin’ along or sayin’ anything. He didn’t have that glazed-over look he sometimes got when I talked. In fact, he wasn’t looking at me at all. “Kemp, are you listenin’ to me? Kempner?” I turned and checked over my shoulder, and the only thing back there behind me was Kai. She was giving him the eye, too.

  I shut up and just watched for a minute, then I called Kai over and made the introductions. Kemp got tongue-tied, of all things. That boy never had a problem talking to girls in his whole life.

  “Kai stopped and picked us up when nobody else would,” I offered up, just to see what Kemp would say. “Without her, I don’t know what we’da done.” I had to nudge the boy a little to get him to come back to the world of the livin’. He snapped to all at once and stuck out his hand to shake Kai’s.

  “Good to meet you, Kai. Sounds like we owe you a debt of thanks,” he said.

  My gracious, didn’t that sound formal? Debt of thanks … Someone was tryin’ to make a good impression. Hmmm …

  Kai blushed. Her big blue eyes met Kemp’s, and they both stalled again, so I hopped in to keep the conversation going, since no one else was talkin’. “This gal ain’t scared of anythin’. She helped us fight off three sauced-up rednecks with guns in their truck.”

  Kemp’s eyes got big and his mouth dropped open.

  “Like I said, we had us a real adventure,” I told him. “Kai here was a wonder.”

  “She must be.” Kemp looked like he believed it. “Anybody who’d take on you three has to be superhuman.” Then he gave Kai one of those grins of his, and it wasn’t lost on her, I’ll tell you. She laughed, and blushed, and giggled all at once.

  The time for talking was over then, and everyone got busy putting gas in the vehicles and gathering the luggage and the kids so we could get on the road. If we headed out soon, we could maybe make it halfway home before dark, Frank said. He talked to Pastor D., and told him, since there wasn’t a hurricane shelter that wasn’t packed full between here and Daily, the Holy Ghost folks should come with us and we’d put them up in Daily. Frank said it was the least the Daily folk could do, after the Holy Ghost people’d saved me, and Lucy, and Imagene. “It’s a slow trip, with the roads flooded, but if we head on out, we’ll be back in Daily tonight,” Frank said, and Pastor D. didn’t waste any time getting his folks moving.

  Back in Daily tonight … The words sure sounded good. Tonight I’d sleep in my own bed, and this crazy, wild adventure of ours would be over.

  All of a sudden, something crossed my mind that wasn’t there before. In all the excitement when the Daily men’d showed up, I was so excited I never even noticed. Now it hit me like a ton of bricks. Ronald wasn’t here. He didn’t come.

  My heart squeezed. All these folks’d dropped what they were doing and drove down here to rescue us, but Ronald wasn’t with them.

  My brother passed by, and I asked him, “Frank, where’s Ronald?”

  Frank had a hose on his shoulder, and he was headed to gas up the bus from the tank on the back of Pearly’s truck. “Couldn’t find him when we were gettin’ together to leave out. Figured he’d headed down the river, fishin’. His truck, boat, and tackle was gone from the house.”

  Down the river … fishin’. Frank’s words fell over me like cold water. All the while I was traveling, off far from home, Ronald’d never once checked to see if we’d got on the ship all right? He’d just headed off on one of his fishin’ trips like it was any normal day. Like there wasn’t a thing to worry about …

  A feeling slid over me that was as sudden and as low as anything I’d ever felt in my life. It sank down my throat and landed in my stomach. I stood there so heavy with the weight of it, I couldn’t move.

  Fifty-one years I been with that man, and he didn’t even check on me. If you loved somebody, you’d care whether they were safe. Even if you were mad at them for going off on a cruise, you’d care… .

  An old pain sneaked from the place I’d buried it, like a dead thing you put in the ground, then it swells up in the summer heat and comes out of the soil. In the blink of an eye, I was a little girl, watching out the back of the community building while all the parents filed in for the 4-H Christmas style show. Our truck pulled up, but it was Uncle Bean in the driver’s seat and Frank with him. Uncle Bean looked about as thrilled as a calf in the dehorn chute. I knew Frank’d got Uncle Bean to bring him, and I knew why. My daddy wasn’t coming. He was probably back at the ranch with a bottle of whiskey.

  All of a sudden, I didn’t feel pretty in my Christmas dress. Even t
hough I’d worked months making it, I wanted to run home and take it off and throw it under the bed. All I could think was A daddy who loved his little girl would want to see her in the pretty party dress she worked on all year. Wouldn’t he?

  Wouldn’t he?

  It’d been a long time since I’d let myself go back to that day, but standing there thinking about Ronald down at the river fishing while I was in a hurricane, I felt just the same. It’s hard to see, with so many days in a lifetime, how you can circle back on yourself without even knowing it, but I was the girl in the Christmas dress again, waiting out back of the community building for a man who had better things to do. I’d been feeling that way a long time, even though I didn’t want to admit to it.

  Imagene walked up with our beach bag. “Where’s Ronald?” Sometimes I think Imagene and me are like them twins that when one slices a finger with the kitchen knife, the other one gets a pain a thousand miles away.

  I realized I’d been standin’ there with my head in the past while everyone bustled around like an army in double time, gettin’ ready to go. “They couldn’t find him when they left out of town.” I tried to sound like it was no matter. There wasn’t any sense making Imagene feel bad because I was hurting. Keep the cap on the bluing, my grandma Eldridge always said. A little spill stains a whole batch. I scratched at a spot on my sleeve. “Bob said they figured he was gone down the river fishin’.”

  Imagene’s lips moved like she was chewing a cud and thinking about how it tasted. “I reckon he must be, or else he’d be here, if he knew.”

  “Reckon” was about all I could get out. If I said anything more about Ronald, I’d give myself away. “I’ll go check inside and see if we forgot anythin’. Why don’t y’all load on up?” Folks were already getting in the bus, dragging tired kids and suitcases along with them, and Ernest’d finished strapping in the pet carriers and closed the door on his delivery truck.