by Lisa Wingate
“I wasn’t just talkin’ about dancing.” Imagene was on this like a coonhound on a tree. She didn’t even sound tired anymore. “Just ’cause your daddy never stepped up don’t mean you don’t deserve better from a man.”
I heard a noise in the hall, and I looked up and realized Kai was there. She must’ve come in the back door after checking on her dogs. “Well hey, hon,” I said to her, and then into the phone, “Kai’s back. I gotta go, Imagene.”
Imagene smacked her lips, letting me know she wasn’t happy about leavin’ the cows out of the barn. “Think about what I said. When Ronald does come home, you go right on and say your piece.”
“No tellin’ when Ronald’ll come home. Brother Ervin said his truck and trailer ain’t at Boggy Bend ramp. He probably drove up to the deer lease to meet his brother. You know how them two are.”
“Netta. I mean it. You call him, like Brother Ervin said.”
Good gravy, Imagene knew I’d promised Brother Ervin. She’d probably put him up to asking me about Ronald in the first place. I was mortified, of course. Just mortified. “No phones at the deer lease.”
“Netta. You give him a call and tell him what’s happened, or I will.”
“I gotta go, darlin’.”
“Don’t you darlin’ me, Donetta Bradford. You listen here—”
“Night-night. Get your beauty sleep. We got folks to feed tomorrow.”
“Net—” I hung up, like I didn’t hear her still talking.
Kai sailed across the room, and she had the glow a’ roses on her cheeks and a dreamy look in her eyes. “Come on in and sit down, hon,” I said. “How was your day?”
She blinked like she didn’t even know I was there at first, then she said, “Good. I hope the dogs haven’t been any trouble this evening.” Her eyes flicked toward the radio, and she frowned at Ophelia’s voice talking about storm stories. I switched off the sound and turned on the TV instead. Kai probably wanted to see the weather report.
“Oh no, the dogs hadn’t been any trouble. There’s nothin’ they could hurt in that backyard, believe me. One time when we first got married, I thought I was gonna grow flowers, but the flowers’ve long since gone wild.” I laughed, thinking of when we moved into the little yellow house on B Street and how I made all kinds of plans to clean out flower beds and put in plants. I wanted our place to be perfect, so everyone’d see that even though I’d quit college and got married, I could do a sight better at putting together a life than my daddy did. We’d have the place with the mowed yard, and the flowers bloomin’ in rows, and the apple pie in the windowsill, and the kids all spit shined—boys in little cowboy boots and girls in bows and Mary Jane shoes fresh from the dry goods store.
When our first-year anniversary rolled around and there wasn’t a baby on the way yet, Ronald knew I was down about it. He went to the Women’s Auxiliary plant sale and brought me home a pickup load of plants so we could make the yard like I wanted it to be.
I’d forgot all about that until just now… .
Kai slipped into the chair across and tucked her hands between her knees, like she didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t want to be rude and head straight upstairs, either. She watched the Weather Channel while they showed buildings pushed off their foundations and streets hip-deep in water. I wondered if she knew any of them places.
“You and Kemp have fun today?” I asked, to take her mind off things … well, and because I can’t help bein’ nosy.
“We did.” There was a little giggle in her voice, like she was remembering something. Oh my, I could recall being a young gal, feeling that way after a date with a beau.
“Heard y’all ran into Jenny Mayfield over to the vet clinic.” No sense beating around the bush, I figured.
Kai’s eyes snapped back to me, and her cheeks got red. “We did … I … mean … ummm …” Cat had got her tongue, all of a sudden.
“It’s all right, darlin’. I can pretty much picture what that was like. You must be wonderin’ about them two.”
Her lashes flew up, all innocent-like, and she shook her heard real fast. “Oh no, I didn’t, I mean, I don’t … Kemp was just showing me around town. I don’t want to …” She took a minute to look for the right words, then finished with “… get in the way. It was very nice of him to drive me around today.”
A little laugh bubbled up my throat. If that gal was a poker player, she’d lose every time. Her face read like a book in big print and short sentences. “Hon,” I told her, “a man don’t look at a woman like he’s been lookin’ at you because he’s just tryin’ to be nice.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, but I could tell she was wondering if I was telling the truth.
“Trust me.” I stared her straight in the eye. “I can spot that special somethin’ from fifty foot away. Sometimes it happens between two people right off. Like when Imagene met her Jack. I knew from the minute I saw them two together it was the real deal. And it was. Everybody thought she was crazy, acceptin’ that boy’s ring when they’d only just met, and he had years left in the service, but I knew. I knew somethin’ like that don’t come along even once in every lifetime. You got to grab hold of it when it does, or you spend the rest of your days wonderin’ what might’ve happened.”
Kai looked down at her hands, her lips twisting to one side, a little sad, a little thoughtful. “I’m not the grabbing-on type.”
“Neither is Kempner, but you never know. I’ve seen it happen before.”
Kai looked up at me, her blue eyes so big and worried and lost, I wanted to take her in my arms like a little child. “I’ll have to go back to work soon.”
“Ssshhh,” I whispered. “Don’t spread a trail of worries out ahead of you.”
She didn’t answer, just sat there looking at her hands.
“Don’t fret about Jenny, either,” I said finally. Might as well get everything out front, since we were workin’ on a short timetable here. A short timetable don’t allow the matchmaker to beat around the bush. “The two of them needed to be done with each other a long time ago. Sometimes when you grow up so close together, you’re a little too much like a brother and a sister to ever be real romantic.”
The dogs barked outside, and Kai turned an ear to it. Whatever was going through her mind seemed to shake off then, and she got up and went to look out the door. When she come back, the melancholy face was gone. “Guess I’d better let you get to bed,” she said.
I figured that was her way of saying I’d stuck my nose in enough. “Oh hon, I’m a night owl. I’ll be up for hours yet,” I told her. “But don’t let me keep you awake. I’m sure you’re tired. I’m just gonna watch the news and whatnot. See the previews for Dancin’ With the Stars. It’s my favorite show. I don’t usually miss, but this last week’s been so busy, them stars had to start dancin’ without me.”
Nodding, she headed toward the hall, then swiveled back just as I was getting the remote to turn off all that horrible storm news. “A lot of the time when the men don’t dance,” she said, “it’s because they don’t know how.” She blurted out the words so fast it took me a minute to pull them apart. Even then, I was still confused.
“Pardon, hon?”
Her face got pink as a baby’s bottom. “On the ship, when I help teach ballroom dancing, a lot of times the men don’t dance because they never learned, but they don’t want to admit it. They’re afraid of looking stupid.”
“Hon, I think we jumped the track somewhere here.” I couldn’t figure why in the world she was on the subject of ballroom dancing. “I don’t have a bit of an idea what you’re talkin’ about.”
She fidgeted from one foot to the other, pushing her palms against her shorts, like her hands were sweaty. “Your husband … ummm … Ronald? Maybe he just never learned. I could give him a few lessons when he comes back … if I’m still here, I mean. I know easy ways to teach all the dances. Maybe the two of you could take a cruise together, next time.”
I was struck
speechless for a minute. Imagine, me and Ronald heading off on some cruise ship together! Right after that thought crossed my mind, I got embarrassed, because I knew Kai’d heard me on the phone with Imagene. I was caught between being full-on mortified and wanting to give her a hug, because it was real sweet of her to try to help Ronald and me. “Oh hon, I think it’d take a joint act of God and Congress to get Ronald to go for that. He just ain’t the type.”
“Well, like you said, you never know,” she pointed out. “I’ve seen it happen before.” Clever girl, chasing my own words right back at me. “Never say never, right?”
Never say never. “Hon, I doubt if that’s in the cards for Ronald and me, but it’s real sweet of you to offer. Don’t you worry about us, all right? We been the way we are a long time, and you got enough things on your mind.” I stood up and hugged her for being so sweet. “You just go on to bed now and get your rest, all right?”
“All right.” She hesitated again a minute. “But, really, I’ll help if I can.”
“I know you would, darlin’. Sweet dreams.”
She padded off to bed, and I stood there thinkin’, If Kemp don’t try to grab on to that gal with both hands, he’s a fool in a fool’s hat.
I sat there for a while, thinking about a cruise and trying to picture Ronald taking dancing lessons and the two of us cutting a rug. Just the idea of it made me laugh. Wouldn’t that be a sight, and boy oh boy, wouldn’t Betty Prine spit sour pickles!
Not that any of that would ever happen, of course.
But it was still kind of fun thinking about it. Maybe it was a little easier to imagine without Ronald sitting there in his chair like a lump.
I was still entertainin’ the picture and laughing about it to myself when I finally turned off the TV and headed off to bed. I figured it’d be pressing my luck not to keep my promise to Brother Ervin, so I made myself stop in the kitchen and call Ronald’s brother’s house. Of course, it went straight to the answerin’ machine, which meant he wasn’t home and hadn’t been for a while. No doubt him and Ronald were havin’ a high old time camping at the deer lease and fishin’ the ponds there.
I left a message on the answering machine and then went off to bed, figuring that I’d done enough to keep my promise to Brother Ervin. Ronald would show up home when he was ready—probably just about the time I was supposed to get back from my cruise. Which meant he’d be gone a few more days yet. If Ronald wasn’t home on Thursday—the day I was supposed to’ve got back—I wasn’t sure how I was gonna feel.
In the morning when I woke up, I sat up and checked out the window for Ronald’s truck, first thing. I’d dreamed that he’d got home in the middle of the night with a stringer full of fish. In the dream, he put the fish in the bathtub, and for some reason, I thought that was just fine. I went in and helped him run the water.
Even though that worry was over me like a cloud, everything else that day ticked along just as tight as a eight-day clock. Sister Mona and her people got settled in out at the ranch. The folks from Caney Creek Church took them breakfast, they all shared church service out at the ranch, and Bob even sent fried chicken and iced tea from the Daily Café for lunch.
Frank and Kemp got a flatbed trailer all set up so Frank could head down toward the coast on Monday to look for Imagene’s van and Kai’s bus, and when they were done with that, they got a TV out of Frank’s shop building, took it to the ranch, and hooked it to a big old antenna up on the roof. They had Kai crawling around in the attic to string the wire, because she was the only one small enough to do it. I about pitched a fit at Kemp when I heard about it, but Kai just laughed and told me her daddy was an electrician one summer and she helped him, so crawling around an attic was nothin’ new to her.
“There’s not much she can’t do,” Kemp said, and that boy looked moony as a coyote. Them kids were two peas in a pod if I ever saw. Right after they dropped by the house and told me about the TV wires, they headed off to feed the bottle baby out at Kemp’s house, and then they were gonna go down on Caney Creek because Kai wanted to see the place where the Tonkawa Indians had painted pictures on the rocks. Daily Folk called that spot Camp Nikyneck, because it was where the teenagers went to spend a little time romancin’, so I figured I knew what Kemp had in mind.
Everything seemed like it was turnin’ out right as rain, especially when Betty Prine come by for her wash-and-curl on Monday and let it slip, on purpose of course, that a cousin of hers, Ferla somethin’ up in Arkansas, was having tests done and it looked like she was gonna need gall bladder surgery. It’d be Betty’s job to go care for her, which meant, of course, that Betty would be a whole state away, and for a good while, if we were lucky.
I never did such a fast job on somebody’s hair in my life. I didn’t want to delay her packing or anything.
“My, but that was quick.” Betty checked side to side in the mirror, patting her loopy gray puff to make sure everything was to her satisfaction.
“Don’t want to hold you up, in case you need to leave sooner than you planned.” I whipped off the cape and moved straight to the cash register.
“Oh, well, Ferla knows it’ll be at least a day before Harold can get away from the bank, so she’ll just have to get her neighbor to help out until we can get there. It’s difficult for us, you know. When you own so many businesses, you just can’t flit off at a moment’s notice.” Betty wandered up and wrote out her check. “I’m adding an extra dollar in here for tip.”
“You might want to save that for your travelin’.” It was just like Betty Prine to act like she was doing me a favor, throwing a whole dollar extra my way. “It’s a long drive up to Arkansas.”
“Yes, yes,” she agreed. “Speaking of—I do hope Harold’s donation the other day was enough to fuel up those vehicles for the trip to Dallas. Being as we have the means, we always feel that it’s important to help out the less fortunate.” She looked right at me when she said that, less fortunate.
I wanted to wad up that check and stuff it right in that snooty circle of Passion Peach #2 lipstick, but instead I tucked the check in the drawer. “Oh, surely it was.”
“I imagine they’re all settled in a shelter by now.” Betty stood at the counter, rooted in like crab grass. “Have you heard anything from them?” Why she cared, I couldn’t fairly guess.
“They haven’t called.” That ain’t a lie, Lord. Well, not exactly, anyhow. Since there wasn’t any phone out at the ranch and cell phones didn’t usually work out there, Sister Mona and Brother D. didn’t have any way to call.
Betty snorted out her nose, her mouth pinched shut. “I’d imagine they might have called, or left a thank-you note at least. I thought it would be nice to publish it in the newspaper—good public relations, what with Daily getting so much attention from the Amber Anderson craze and now the movie deal. Never hurts to let the world know we aren’t too high to be charitable.”
“Oh, Betty, everyone knows how charitable you are.” Is it a lie, Lord, when you say one thing and think another? It ain’t, really. No, it ain’t. A body can only put up with so much.
Betty picked up her purse, purring like a cat. “Well, it is our duty, after all. Do you still have that little blond-headed girl stayin’ out at your place?”
I got hot around the neck, thinking that now Betty Prine was gonna try to tell me who I couldn’t keep at my own house. “Yes, Betty, I do.”
She made a little tsk-tsk under her breath. “Well, you ought to be careful, you know, having some stranger in your home, what with Ronald gone and all. Wherever is Ronald, anyway? Did he make it home in time to drive down toward the coast with Frank to look for Imagne’s lost van?”
“Ronald’s still on one of his fishin’ trips.” As if she didn’t know. There wasn’t a thing went on in town Betty Prine didn’t sniff out. That woman was like a rat after trash. “Frank took Buddy Ray along to the coast. Buddy Ray’s good with cars.”
Betty blinked wide, her eyes droopy and sorrowful. “Well, my heaven
s, you’d think by now Ronald would have heard about the hurricane, wherever he’s at.”
“He don’t carry a cell phone” was pretty much all I could get out, and that was only because I’d been having a real good day until Betty come in, and with her leavin’, it was about to get better again.
She shook her head, frownin’ at me, real sorrowful. “What a shame. Well, suppose I’d better run.” She give a finger wave like a beauty queen afloat in the homecoming parade. “I’ve a million loose ends to tie up so we can go look after Ferla.”
Watching Betty head out the door, I was feelin’ sorry for Ferla. But not too sorry to share the good news with Imagene and Lucy, just as soon as Betty went out the door. We celebrated with a cup of coffee and pecan pie.
“Betty’s cousin couldn’ta picked a better time to get a gall bladder attack.” Imagene savored a bite of pecan pie, smiling. “Not that I’d be rejoicin’ over anybody’s misfortune, of course.”
Lucy giggled behind her hand. “I don’ know what kind is most bad. Get-teeng bad gall bladder or to have Betty come take your care.”
All three of us laughed until we were snorting coffee and Imagene about choked on a pecan. Since we were on a roll of the sillies, I popped off and told them what Kai’d said about me and Ronald taking dancing lessons and going on a cruise.
“Can you imagine that?” I asked, and all three of us hooted.
Imagene pushed her plate away and fanned her cheeks. “Maybe you and Ronald ought to take my cruise ticket. Y’all could dance the night away, just like on Love Boat.”
I threw my head back and laughed until tears come out my eyes. “Ronald’d probably get put in the brig for trying to drop a trollin’ line off the back of the ship. He’d be the first fella to ever show up for a cruise with a tackle box and stink bait.” We all hooted some more at the idea of Ronald trying to fish off one of them giant ships.
