Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  The blockage gave way suddenly, Kemp and I fell backward and landed in a pile, and the cat ran for daylight. Radar burst through the opening immediately after, running on three feet while trying to kick something white and square off his back paw and dragging a string of Christmas lights. Scrambling onto all fours, Kemp dove for the trailing extension cord but came up empty, and Radar bolted up the street, disappearing around the corner faster than you’d think a three-legged dog could.

  Kemp and I scrambled to our feet and took off in hot pursuit.

  We caught up with Radar in the alley behind Main Street, where the Christmas lights had wedged under the wheels of a Dumpster. The cat was on top, serenely licking her paws.

  “Oh, you’re dead, buddy,” I threatened, but Radar was busy trying to chew the white thing off his foot. “You are so dead.”

  Kemp and I moved closer, stalking with our arms out, like wildlife biologists on a Discovery Channel feature. Radar succeeded in freeing his foot from the white square of whatever-it-was and came up with the mystery object stuck to the end of his nose. Whimpering, he tried to rub it off on the asphalt, but it was firmly adhered to whiskers, nose, and a section of lolling tongue. When I grabbed his collar, he tilted his head upward with a soulful whine that said, Look! Here I am minding my own business, and a mysterious rectangle has come and stuck itself to my nose.

  Growling through my teeth, yet managing to maintain admirable self-control, I tried to free the wax-covered square of cardboard. It wouldn’t budge. Skin stretched, whiskers popped, and Radar squealed, so I let go.

  Leaning in from the opposite side, Kemp studied the problem. I touched the sticky surface and left some skin behind getting my finger loose. “What is this thing?”

  “Rat trap,” Kemp said, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “No way that’s coming off easily.”

  “A rat … eeewww.” I’d seen glue traps for mice, but nothing of this size, or … stickiness. There were bugs and pieces of brown hair trapped on the glutinous surface, as if a rat had been there before. “Gross.” Swiping my finger on Radar’s hair, I tried to rub off the rest of the glue, a shudder traveling down my spine. “Now what do we …” I looked up and Kemp was startlingly close. So near, I could see tiny streamers of silver and green set against the earthy color of his eyes. Whatever I’d been about to say left my head. Dog? What dog?

  My mind hopscotched, and we hovered in a three-way tangle of suspended animation. Suddenly, the dog thrust his head between us, the rat trap boxed me in the nose, and something caught the end of my ponytail.

  “Oh, gross!” I jerked back, Radar squealed, and I realized we were now glued together, rat fur and all. “Eeewww! Get it off!” I reached blindly for the trap and Radar yelped in my ear.

  Kemp grabbed the dog, or me, or both. “Hold still.” His voice was straining against laughter at first, and then he had the nerve to give in to it. I felt his hand on my head and his breath on my ear as he leaned over the dog and me. The proximity might have been romantic, if not for the dog, and the fact that all I could think was, Rat fur and bugs, rat fur and bugs, rat fur …

  Kemp’s fingers slid into my hair. “Don’t move, all right? Whoa, what a mess.”

  Painful twinges coursed over my scalp, and follicles came loose at the roots. “Owww!”

  Radar whimpered in agreement, or defeat, or both.

  Retreating, Kemp stood above us, considering the problem, while I clutched the dog in a bear hug. From that vantage, I could see that Radar also had a trap stuck to his rear end. He was sitting on it. Along the edge of the cardboard, it read This End Up. Somewhere overhead, Miss Peach’s cat meowed softly, and Radar growled.

  “Do something.” I had a sudden picture of Radar taking off with my hair attached to his snout.

  “The vet’s office is right across the road from the school. I’ll grab my truck out front,” Kemp suggested finally. “Maybe the vet’s got something that’ll get this off.”

  “No way!” I squealed. “Cut the hair, rip it out, do whatever, but I am not going to the vet clinic.”

  “Darlin’,” he said, and he was close again, his voice soft against my ear. “There’s a lot of things I’d do for a pretty girl, but I’m not cutting off that hair.”

  Chapter 17

  Donetta Bradford

  By eight o’clock in the mornin’, my building downtown was hop-pin’ like a sale barn on sheep and goat day. Sister Mona’s bunch was gathered downstairs, watching the weather news in the back part of the shop where I keep the coffeepot, a TV, some old sofas, and some exercise machines I got at yard sales. The equipment don’t get used much, but right now, it was comin’ in handy for folks to sit on.

  When I walked in with the pecan rolls and casserole, Bluejay was bouncing real gentle-like on the Abs-o-matic with his little baby in his arms.

  “He been fussy?” I asked, walkin’ by with the food.

  Bluejay yawned. He had the nervous look new papas have, and he was holdin’ that baby like he expected it to explode any minute.

  “Yeah. Jovette been up with him all night, walkin’. She finally come and hand him over, sayin’, ‘You take him. This yo’ bébé.’ ”

  I smelled baby powder and milk, and felt the itch grannies get when there’s a little bundle within arm’s reach. “Let me set up this food, and I’ll take him for a bit. It’s hard on a little guy, all this commotion day after day. I’d cry, too.”

  “Mais yeah,” Bluejay yawned again. “Gal-ee, he got the lungs.”

  “Maybe he’ll be a singer like his daddy.” Somewhere along the way, I’d heard that Bluejay made his livin’ singing in restaurants, and he played the guitar and sang in the Holy Ghost Church, too.

  I lifted up the blanket and peeked inside. That baby had his nose all scrunched up like he wasn’t one little bit happy. “Precious. Oh, he’s precious.”

  Bluejay snorted, but he was smiling a little. “Tha’s not what his mama call him las’ night. He kept the whole place up. She finally took him out and sit on the curb. The sheriff deputy, he come by and ask what she’s doin’ out there.”

  “Buddy Ray Baldridge?” I checked the window just in case Buddy Ray was passing by in his cruiser. I was gonna go thump him on that big knothead of his if he’d been bothering my guests… . “Just ignore him. If sense was chickpeas, Buddy Ray wouldn’t make a side dish. The only reason the sheriff sends him out in the cruiser at night is to get him out of the way.”

  “Nah, he’s just tryin’ to help,” Bluejay answered. “He got Jovette a blanket from the trunk and then he sit there on the curb and play the harmonica. Turn out this little bébé, he like country music.”

  All of a sudden, I got a picture of Buddy Ray Baldridge sitting out in the moonlight, with his long skinny legs folded up and his body bent over that harmonica, playing “Red River Valley” and “So Lonesome I Could Cry” (the only two songs Buddy Ray knew), to quiet that little baby. A tenderness washed over me, and I felt bad for having a mean thought toward Buddy Ray. A mean thought’s just a sin that happens on the inside, Brother Ervin said in sermon one day.

  I left Bluejay there bouncing on the Abs-o-matic, and I got the food put out and took the covers off the things Imagene and some of the Methodist ladies’d brought. The guests were glad to have the breakfast, but from listening to the TV and hearing them talk, it was pretty clear the news from down around their homeplaces wasn’t getting any better.

  I took Bluejay’s baby and walked the floor with him while everybody ate. After a minute, the baby quit mewing around and just looked up at me real quiet and still, his big blue eyes thoughtful, like he was trying to figure me out. His little hands grabbed my finger, and I thought how good it felt to hold a baby. Then I got sad, because I knew that the poor little guy might not have anything to go home to.

  On TV, a newsman was hip-deep in water, saying could be two weeks, a month, maybe even more before electric got restored and they let people go home to the coast. Lucy come in the bac
k door with a casserole she’d fixed, and I started thinking we better have a meetin’ about what in the world we were gonna do with all these people for that long. When I whispered that to Lucy, she said we oughta slip next door to the café and catch Imagene, so all three of us could talk.

  Lucy kidnapped the baby from me, and we walked past the dryer chairs and swung open the bookshelf to let ourselves into the café. Nobody knows why that secret doorway’s in the wall between the café and the hotel buildin’. There’s lots of stories about bank robberies and Confederate escape plans and secret tunnels under the building from way back in the Civil War. Folks used to scare us kids sometimes with tall tales about ghosts. My daddy told us he saw the ghost a time or two—said it walked right by him, droppin’ gold coins on the floor. Clink, clink, clink.

  Pickled as my daddy was, he probably did see it.

  Lucy and me caught Imagene behind the cash register. The morning coffee was brewin’, and Bob was scraping off the fry grill. He had the Vent-A-Hood on, so I figured we could talk right there and he wouldn’t hear a word.

  I turned my back to him so he wouldn’t see my face. Havin’ spent so much time under the Vent-A-Hood, Bob’d got pretty good at reading lips.

  “You seen the news this mornin’?” I asked.

  Imagene nodded, then swatted a fly with her ticket book and brushed him off the counter into the trash. Good thing there wasn’t any customers at the bar—just old raw-boned Doyle, perched atop his favorite stool, dozing on his hand. His mouth was hangin’ open a little, and it looked like he was sound asleep. He was probably tired after the big rescue yesterday, bless his heart.

  “Imagene,” I said, “the TV’s tellin’ it that these folks might be waitin’ two weeks, a month, maybe longer before they can go home. We can’t have folks sleepin’ on floors and wearin’ the same suit of clothes all that time.”

  Lucy nodded like she agreed, which is what Lucy usually does. “They got to eat, too,” she said. “What we doing about that, all these days? Who go-een to buy all that grocery?”

  I scratched my head, nodding along. I ain’t one to judge people, but even I could tell from the luggage those folks’d brought, and the fact that a lot of them come on the church bus, that they weren’t just rollin’ knee-deep in money.

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. “I really don’t.” Already this morning, I’d used up every bit of the breakfast food I’d bought to keep Ronald going while I was out on my cruise. He’d had a fit when he saw the bill for all that stuff. I’m retired now, Netta, he’d said. We can’t be buyin’ like we used to. Ronald didn’t talk about much, but he could get stirred up about money. To hear him, you’da thought we were on our very last dime.

  Then again, I guess we had plenty of money to buy boat gas, fish bait, and tackle so he could take off down the river all week while I was trapped in a hurricane. Guess that wasn’t a problem.

  Imagene sighed and leaned over the counter, resting her elbows on it. “I heard Sister Mona and Pastor D. talkin’ about how they oughta pack everyone up and try to head for one of the convention center shelters in Dallas or Waco. ‘Pastor D., we can’t impose on these folks for days and weeks without payin’ our way, and we gotta save what money we got left for gas,’ that’s what Sister Mona said. She told him they’d need to move on pretty quick to someplace where FEMA would take care of them.”

  I looked over at Bluejay’s baby, sound asleep in a wad on Lucy’s chest, his little lips hanging open in a tiny cupid’s bow, and I tried to picture him cooped up in the Dallas Convention Center with thousands of other folks who’d evacuated. He could catch a cold, and with so much racket, he probably never would sleep. “We can’t let them do that, Imagene. They took us in and saved us from the storm. We owe a debt.”

  I ran a finger along that baby’s cheek, and he puckered, smacked his lips, then sighed. “They got babies, and old folks like Obeline, and I been hearin’ on the news that them shelters up in Dallas are overflowin’ anyhow. They might get up there and not be able to find a place at all. Who’s gonna have room for all those people?”

  “I uggg-got a room, got a room over to-to my uppp-place.” Doyle perked up on his counter stool, and I realized he was listening, not sleeping. “I can b-b-bunk out in the camp-camper. I uddd-don’t mind.” Doyle might’ve been a backward old crow, but he had the heart of a prince inside that bony body of his.

  “You’re a good man, Doyle.” I had a feelin’ a shelter in Dallas was probably cleaner than Doyle’s old house. “But we got a bigger problem than one house is gonna solve, and then there’s the foo—”

  The door burst open, and in breezed Betty Prine. She looked well rested, which she probably was, since I hadn’t seen her downtown last night helping out. “Donetta Bradford, you want to tell me what in the world is going on over there? It’s my wash-and-curl morning, and your shop is full of—” she stopped to hunt a word, and finally settled for— “people. There are children running everywhere and the whole place smells of food.”

  Like usual, Betty’s voice crawled up my spine and pulled every short hair along the way. That woman could get my back up quicker than anybody I ever met. “Well, Betty, since they’re havin’ breakfast, I expect that’s understandable.”

  Betty let the café door fall shut behind her and blinked at me like I was too thick to get her point. “I have an appointment this morning. It’s my day.”

  Imagene grumbled under her breath, “It’s always her day.”

  The baby started to squirm and whimper in Lucy’s arms, like even he felt Betty Prine muckin’ up the air in the room.

  “I always come on Saturday,” Betty chirped, then poked her nose around like a bird sniffing for worms, and spotted the baby. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a baby.” Heaven forgive me, but any day you can aggravate Betty Prine is a good day.

  Betty looked down her nose at Bluejay’s little baby, snuggled in Lucy’s arms. “What are you doing with it?”

  “Hording it,” Lucy answered.

  Now, Betty Prine’s been around Lucy for fifty years, but for some reason, even though everybody else in town can pick out Lucy’s words just fine, Betty’s always got to act like she don’t know what Lucy’s saying. “Hording it? Hording it from what?” She knew Lucy meant holding.

  “Hording it from me,” Imagene said, and reached across the counter. “Here, let me have that baby. I ain’t held him yet.” Lucy turned over the baby, and Imagene settled him in, then purred like a cat, “I’d give you a turn, Betty, but I don’t think I can let him loose.”

  “Pppfff!” Betty stuck up her nose, her lip curling on one side. “I need a wash-and-curl. I don’t have time for that nonsense.”

  Imagene just smiled at her, real pleasant. “Well, we grandmas always got time for a baby. When you’re a grandma, that’s the way it is. You love ’em all, whether they’re yours or not. You’ll understand one of these days, Betty.”

  Betty’s face turned three shades of hot. We all knew that her spoiled-rotten daughters lived together in a house up in Dallas, and far as anyone’d ever heard, neither of them’d ever had a date. Betty was about as far away from grandkids as a mouse from moose, and that goaded her right in the flank flesh. Grandkids are one treasure money can’t buy, so there wasn’t a thing Betty could do about it.

  She knew it, too, so she just pretended Imagene wasn’t there. “Donetta Bradford, are you going to give me my wash-and-curl or not?”

  I been almost dead in a hurricane and now I got a whole busload of people to take care of. The last thing I got on my mind is washing your hair, Betty Prine. But I didn’t say it. When you own a business in a small town, you got to bite your tongue sometimes, especially with people like Betty Prine. Betty can make a lot of trouble if she wants to. “Betty, you know all appointments been canceled this week on account of our cruise.”

  Her lips pressed hard together and curved upward just at the corners. Her mouth looked like it ought to have the fur of somet
hing cute and fuzzy hangin’ out of it. “You aren’t on a cruise, Donetta. I supposed that, since you’re back here in Daily, you’d be getting on with business as usual. No sense throwing away good money.”

  My collar steamed hot as a kettle spout. It was just like Betty Prine to backhandedly say I couldn’t get by without her twenty dollars for a wash-and-curl.

  Lord, you better put a hand over my mouth, because I’m fixin’ to commit a sin of the tongue.

  Imagene must’ve heard that prayer go through my head, because she jumped in before I could commence to do somethin’ stupid. “Heaven’s sake, Betty, can’t you see we got folks to take care of? There’s been a hurricane, remember?”

  Betty clicked her big yellow teeth. “Well, I supposed that, now that it’s daylight, they’d be packing up and heading to a proper shelter—someplace prepared for the … displaced.”

  “Been a lot of Daily folk helpin’ make a place here.” Imagene’s chin stuck out like she was ready to get in a spittin’ match. “Love thy neighbor, and all that, like Brother Ervin was talkin’ about in church last Sunday.”

  Betty licked the lipstick off her teeth, or at least she tried. They were still coated. Coral Surprise #3, to be exact. “Well, of course. Harold and I want to do all we can to help. I hope those people enjoyed the cookies last night. Harold is headed by the church this morning to talk to Brother Ervin about getting up a fund to help them move … I mean, travel on to wherever they’re going. We’ll contribute, of course. It’s the Christian thing to do, and we recognize that we’re in a position to afford it more than some.”

  I heard that whistlin’ noise a champagne bottle makes right before the cork blows off and flies across the room, and I grabbed the side of the counter, because otherwise I was gonna snatch Betty’s hair right off her head. Next time she comes in for a perm, I’m gonna set the timer ten minutes too long and send her out the door lookin’ like Mrs. Mayfield’s pet poodle dog. I really am. With them big ears and bug eyes and pointy nose of hers, she’s halfway there already.