Good Hope Road

by Lisa Wingate

  Mrs. Gibson smiled, her violet eyes twinkling. “Every living creature needs to hear the beating of another heart once in a while.” Her words were quiet, almost as if she were only thinking them, not speaking at all. “Nothing God made on this earth is meant to go on its way alone.”

  I nodded without knowing why.

  On his cot by the door, old June Jaans moaned in his sleep, then opened his eyes and looked drowsily at us. “Lordy, what you got there, Eudora?”

  “You just—” Mrs. Gibson stopped as the hiss of air brakes filled the room. “What in the world … ?”

  We walked to the door and looked out. In the parking lot, an enormous white motor home with glittering mirrored windows roared past the front of the armory, towing a matching enclosed trailer. Mrs. Gibson and I looked at each other in confusion, then watched the vehicle roll onto the baseball field down the hill. Shiny and freshly painted, it glittered in the noonday sun, a stark contrast to the dirt-covered, tumbledown town reflected in its windows.

  June Jaans twisted in his bed, trying to see. “Well, what is it? Sounds like someone landed a plane out there.”

  Mrs. Gibson read the grandly scripted letters on the side of the motor home. “Lake Oaks Church Men’s Relief Mission, St. Louis, Missouri.” She shifted the toddler on her chest. “Well, praise be, finally help has come. And all the way from St. Louis.”

  We watched from the doorway as the air brakes let out another loud burst, startling the people on cots in the parking lot. Several sat up and shaded their eyes, looking at the vehicle as if they were encountering something from another planet.

  The motor home door opened, and passengers began filing down the stairs—men in bright jogging suits, clean casual clothes, jeans and golf shirts, clean white sneakers and expensive loafers. They talked and stretched like participants on a Sunday-afternoon golf tour.

  Mrs. Gibson watched them with her brows cocked doubtfully. The men below hardly looked prepared to save anybody, much less a whole town of tornado victims. In fact, they seemed unsure about how to open the cargo hatches on their bus.

  Mrs. Gibson crossed her eyes at me, and the expression made me giggle.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Covering her mouth, she chuckled, and we stood there for a while watching the men try to figure out how to open their truck and trailer. Finally Mrs. Gibson snorted. “Well, heck, I guess them fellas are badly in need of a woman to tell them what to do.” She braced her hands on her hips. “Doc, you oughta come see this.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, look, Doc’s fallen asleep.”

  Doc Howard was sitting in the lawn chair sound asleep with the bowl of chili about to spill onto the floor. I stepped over and took the bowl away, then went back to the doorway. “I think we better see if we can get Doc to go lie down somewhere quiet,” I said. “He really doesn’t look good.”

  Mrs. Gibson nodded. “I’ll leave that to you. I’d better walk down there and get those St. Louis gents lined out. Looks like they just ain’t gonna be able to function without some female instruction. Sometimes the Lord picks the strangest times to show a sense of humor.” She moved to hand the little boy to me.

  Mr. Jaans shifted and pulled his blanket back with a quivering hand. “Put that little boy in here with me, won’t you, Eudora? I’ll keep care of him.”

  Mrs. Gibson frowned over her shoulder at him, then looked at me, muttering, “… put this child in with that filthy old codger.”

  I felt sorry for Mr. Jaans. I leaned close to her, touched the baby’s mud-streaked face, and whispered, “Right now, Mr. Jaans is cleaner than the little boy.”

  Mrs. Gibson set her lips in a hard line and tipped her chin up, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening. I remembered that frown. It was the same scowl she used to have when we walked past her house after getting off the school bus each day.

  “We can’t put the baby in bed by himself,” I pointed out, “and I have to help Doc get somewhere to rest, and …” She didn’t seem to be softening, and I couldn’t imagine why she was being so gripey about it, except that she’d always had a hateful streak a foot wide. “The baby doesn’t care whose heartbeat he hears.”

  She huffed and rolled her eyes. “He’s a dirty old drunk.” She said it loudly enough for Mr. Jaans to hear.

  Anger welled up inside me, and I remembered all the times I’d heard her and those other old bats from the garden club whispering about me. “Yes, but he has a heartbeat. Even dirty old drunks have a heartbeat.”

  She rolled her eyes again, and I felt my temper boil over. For a change, I found the courage to say what was on my mind. “I’m going to give him that little boy the minute you leave, anyway. You may not like Mr. Jaans much, but he was the only one who ever came around and asked about my mama in all those years she was sick. He brought over fresh milk from his cows and vegetables from his garden all summer long. There’s nothing wrong with his heart. It’s better than a lot of people’s around here.”

  She opened her mouth in astonishment. I realized I had struck a nerve, and I wasn’t sorry. Inside me, there was that deep resentment of her and of all the rest of them who had treated us like we were less than everyone else.

  Mrs. Gibson huffed a breath of air, her nostrils widening. “Well, all right,” she said, then walked over to Mr. Janns’s cot and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you roll over on this baby, June Jaans—you hear me?”

  “Yes, m-ma’am,” he said, stammering, face flushed. “I’ll … I’ll take good care of him. You can count on that, Eu-Eudora.”

  “All right, then.” She laid the toddler in the bed, brushing the mud-covered strands of hair from his sleeping face before she pulled the cover over him. “If he wakes up, see if he can tell you his name. We need to find out who he is so we can get him back to his folks.”

  “Yes, m-ma’am,” Mr. Jaans stammered again as she turned and headed for the door. He watched her walk away as if she were Miss America gliding down the red carpet.

  I wondered how he could look at her with all that admiration when she treated him like dirt.

  “I’ll take good care of him, Eudora,” he called after her, sounding almost giddy. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  Mrs. Gibson threw her chin up and gave me a glare that could have fried an egg. I stared straight at her and smiled, the way Drew used to when she tried to look down on him. He just ignored her like he didn’t care what she thought.

  It felt good to stand up for myself. All these years I had been letting them say whatever they wanted to me and about me, and I never argued, because I didn’t want anyone to come to our house and get into it with Daddy.

  I felt a strange sense of freedom at not having to worry about Daddy now. On the heels of that lightness came a heavy slap of guilt that told me it was very wrong for me to be glad Daddy wasn’t here.

  CHAPTER 6

  EUDORA

  “Weldon!” I hollered, from the armory doorway. “Weldon, the doctor needs help in here! Weldon!”

  He was too far away to hear, down in the baseball field with the church volunteers, setting up tents there and moving people into them from the parking lot. I turned and started into the armory, then stopped when I realized help wasn’t needed after all. Flat on her rear, Jenilee Lane had her arms and legs wrapped around little ten-year-old Jimmy Ray Owens, who was spitting, scratching, struggling, and doing everything he could to keep his father and that city doctor from cutting off his pants leg so they could see where all the blood was coming from.

  “He just slipped and fell. Fell right down on a broken window-pane,” the boy’s daddy said, white-faced. “We were just working to clean up what was left of our house, and Jimmy Ray fell off the cistern. There was blood everywhere.”

  The doctor nodded, pulling the cloth away from the wound. “I’m going to need you to help hold him still. There is glass in the wound. I’ll be administering Xylocaine first to ease the pain and reduce the blood loss; then I’ll remove the foreign objects
from the wound.” He headed toward Jimmy Ray’s leg with a syringe and a big set of tweezers, and the boy squealed and jerked like a trapped baby pig.

  The doctor’s hand slipped, and the boy screamed louder. “I said, hold him still!” the doctor hollered at Jenilee.

  Jenilee wrapped her arms tighter around Jimmy Ray’s shoulders and hands, holding him like a papoose. “We need you to be a big boy now, Jimmy Ray,” she told him. “It’s almost over. Just hold still. Hold still. Just a minute more. Just think, you’ll have a story to tell when you get back to school… .” She kept right on talking, and all the while Jimmy Ray screamed at the top of his lungs and tried to get loose.

  The doctor pulled the glass out of Jimmy Ray’s leg, then quickly cleaned the wound.

  When the antiseptic hit his leg, Jimmy Ray swiveled his head to the side and sank his teeth into Jenilee’s shoulder through her T-shirt. She squeezed her eyes shut, but held on until the doctor finished the stitches and bandaged the wound; then she unclamped Jimmy Ray’s teeth and handed him over to his father. She climbed to her feet, rubbing her arm with shaking fingers.

  Jenilee glanced at me, and all of a sudden I realized I had just stood there and watched the whole thing. I hadn’t lifted a finger to help; it all happened so fast, I couldn’t think of anything to do except holler for Weldon. I just stood there, frozen and panicked, watching while little Jenilee piled in to help.

  It’s humbling to realize maybe you ain’t as good as someone you’ve spent years looking down on.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Weldon beside me. He followed my gaze to Jenilee, who stood next to the medicine shelf wiping blood off her hands.

  “Someone down the hill told me you were hollering for me,” Weldon said. “I guess they’ve gotten it taken care of.”

  I looked at my son, the son I’d always been so proud of, and I felt even more ashamed of myself. “Well, I gotta admit, I panicked. Doc Howard’s dead asleep in the back room, and I couldn’t rouse him, and Dr. Albright needed help right away. Next thing I knew, Jenilee was there,” I said, still in awe of how she had seemed to know just what to do to calm Jimmy and hold him so that the doctor could work. “Weldon, I doubt if I ever been so wrong about anybody in my life as I been about little Jenilee,” I admitted. “I never, ever thought that girl had so much pluck. She always seemed like such a mousy little thing, walking around town with her hair hanging over her face, hardly talking to anybody.”

  “Well, Mama, she hasn’t had much of a chance.” Weldon sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “She’s been taking care of her mother and her little brother since she was pretty small, and having to deal with her father ranting around drunk half the time. I think she’s just learned to keep quiet and stay out of the way.”

  I nodded. “The only time I ever saw her act like she had any feelings was when the school bus hit that stray dog in front of my house. She run out there and tried to save that dog, and when he died, Lord, she just sat there in the road and cried.” The picture of her in the road, probably only eight or ten years old, come into my head. “It’s strange, now that I think about it—we all just stood there and let her cry.”

  Weldon shook his head, looking at the ground. “You’re right, Mama. It’s strange,” he said sadly, then turned and walked outside.

  I stood looking at Jenilee, realizing I never gave them Lane kids a thought until that moment when I was trapped in the root cellar and Jenilee carried me out of there like a sack of potatoes. I never would of looked at her and guessed she’d be that strong. Never would of guessed I’d ever need her to come pull me out of my root cellar, either. It’s an odd thing when life twists itself around to where the one person you thought you didn’t need winds up being the one you need the most. Guess that just goes to show things don’t happen by accident. You have a use for everyone you meet in your life, and God don’t put in any extras.

  I thought of Ivy’s angel. Was that what she was trying to tell me?

  A whimper come from June Jaans’s bed beside the door. I looked over and saw him holding a toddler, trying to clean the mud off him with a towel. “June Jaans!” I spat, taking a few quick steps over there and reaching for the little boy. “What in land’s name are you doing with a baby in your bed?”

  June stopped what he was doing and looked at me with his mouth hanging open. “W-well … I … you give him to …” He paused, staring at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. “Eudora, don’t you remember? You give him to me to keep care of—well, it couldn’ta been more than a couple hours ago.”

  My hands froze in the air between us, and my mind tried hard to bring that memory back. Breath choked in my throat, because I knew I should remember. “I remember,” I snapped. “Course I remember.” But I didn’t. I got a snatch of it—a quick picture of a mud-covered little boy coming in with the highway patrolman. “The highway patrolman brung him in.” I bent over the toddler, taking my eyes away from June’s, because I was afraid he was seeing right through me. June Jaans had known me since I was seventeen years old. He knew it wasn’t normal for me to forget.

  “Um-hmm, that’s right,” he said. “The highway patrolman brung him in and Doc checked him out, said it was a miracle he was all right. You took him from the highway patrolman, and when you had to go down the hill, you put him in here with me. Sound asleep, he was, just wore out. He just now woke up, and I was trying to clean him up a bit. He don’t like it much, though.”

  I nodded, and I had a feeling June knew that memory had gone right out of my head. That was why he retold the whole story of the little boy, so I would know what was going on. The worst thing was that I was grateful to him for it. Grateful to drunk old June Jaans! I didn’t know how much worse than that things could get.

  I took the towel and used it to clean the boy’s tiny fingers while the little fella held on to my hand, silent and lost. “Sure I remember that,” I said, trying to save my pride. “Wondered why nobody come for him, that’s all.”

  “Oh … I understand,” June said, his sun-freckled hand brushing mine as he lifted the blanket so I could clean the little boy’s tummy. “He just now started to wake up and look around. I tried to get him to talk to me, but so far, nothin’. Suppose he’s in shock, I guess. Poor little fella. Nobody come for him, and I sure am afraid of the worst. Afraid something might of happened to his folks, I mean.”

  A lump gathered in my throat, and I shook my head. “Well, that ain’t so, and don’t you even say it, either.” I blinked back a tear that tried to wet my eye. “This little one didn’t survive everything to end up alone now; you can bet on that. God wouldn’t let it happen that way.”

  June frowned and smacked his lips, leaning back against his pillow. “Well, I’m beginnin’ to wonder if God’s payin’ much attention here. He’s probably busy in one of them big cities where all them fancy churches are,” he barked, and the roughness of his voice, as much as what he said, sat me back on my heels.

  “June Jaans, don’t you say that!” I said it louder than I meant to, and Annette Abshier, sitting with a sprained ankle a few beds away, turned to look at us. Lordy, I could imagine what she was thinking. What’s Eudora doing over there talking to drunk old June Jaans?

  I lowered my voice because I didn’t want to wind up as fodder for garden club gossip. “Don’t you say that, June Jaans. Just because you’re a heathen don’t mean this little boy is. God kept His hands around this little fellow, just as sure as we’re sittin’ here, and He’s going to bring this boy’s parents back to him. You just see to it that he’s taken care of in the meantime, you hear me?”

  June caught my eyes again and twitched his lips into a crooked smile, almost like he’d only made that comment to bait me. “I hear ya,” he said, smiling wider, looking up at the ceiling and chuckling in his throat. “You done put the fear of God back in me. I ain’t been scolded like that by a woman in a good many years.”

  A disgusted snort come from me, and I stood up, wishing he
wasn’t injured so I could pop him on that smug smile. “Blanket’s all wet. Looks like he ain’t potty trained. I’ll go see if I can find a diaper.” I shook a finger at him. “You just take good care of this little boy, June Jaans. Don’t let him fall out of bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, still smiling like an idiot.

  I pulled the reins on my temper and took in a deep draft of air as I walked away from his bedside. I don’t know why you’re getting yourself so crossways over dirty old June Jaans, Eudora. He’s just as sorry an individual as he ever was.

  “Don’t have the sense God gave a goat,” I muttered as I rifled through the pile of supplies by the door, looking for some diapers that would fit the baby. “Got more lip that an old muley cow, and he’s just as ugly… .”

  “Excuse me?” A voice from behind startled me, and I turned around to find that city doctor there.

  I had to look at his name tag to remember his name. “Oh, Dr. Albright, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like an addle-brain. “I was just talking to myself. We old ladies do that sometimes.”

  He shrugged, looking as humorless as ever. As far as I could tell, Dr. Albright didn’t have much personality, and what little he did have was pretty uppity and about as fake as that silly combed-over hair. Wonder if he takes that off and puts it on the bedpost at night… .

  I realized I was staring at his hairline, and I flushed a little, ashamed. The truth was that, even if he was one of them rich fellas from out of town, we were lucky to have him here. Without him, there would still be no doctor at all, especially now that old Doc Howard had wore himself to a frazzle.

  “Can I help you with anything?” I asked, glancing over his shoulder at little Jimmy Ray, who was being laid on a mattress on the floor by his father and Jenilee Lane. Mazelle Sibley was hovering behind them with a blanket, giving orders. “How’s little Jimmy Ray’s leg? He sure sounded in a lot of pain a while ago. Is he gonna be all right?”

  The doctor continued rifling through the medicine shelf. “Are you a relative?”