by Lisa Wingate
Drew cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Looked like your cows were all in pretty good shape yesterday, June. A few skin cuts, a little hide knocked off here and there, and I fixed some fence where your old bull got out.”
“I do appreciate that. Ain’t seen old Charlie, have ya? I hear he went wandering by what’s left of Mazelle Sibley’s grocery, near scared her to death. She had a bucket in her hand and Charlie was hungry. Chased her plumb down the block and into the Willamses’ pasture. She finally got shed of him by runnin’ through a bog. Charlie don’t like mud much.” He laughed, then winced, grabbing his ribs. “Lands! I’d of paid money to see that… .”
My mind drifted away from the conversation, and I looked toward the doorway. Outside on the stoop, I could see Mrs. Gibson’s shoulder. Her hands were moving and I could hear her talking to someone. I left Drew and Nate and walked over to see who was out there with her.
Weldon, Janet, and Dr. Albright were standing with her on the steps. They stopped talking when they saw me, and they gave each other strange, secretive looks that made me wonder if they had been talking about me. The bushes rustled behind them and Lacy emerged. She walked up the steps and slipped her hand into mine as an uncomfortable silence fell over us.
Weldon finally broke the stalemate. “Well, we wanted to see the pictures,” he said, then gave the others one last, unreadable glance.
Lacy squeezed my hand. I tried to ignore the rest of them and focus on her as Weldon and Janet went into the building and Dr. Albright headed toward the motor home.
Mrs. Gibson stayed on the stoop, watching Lacy and me.
“How are you today, Lacy?” I asked, smoothing the dark hair away from her face. Her gray eyes met mine, and for just an instant I pictured those eyes looking at me from the darkness behind the ventilation screen in Mrs. Gibson’s cellar. She seemed as lost now as she was then.
Lacy shrugged her shoulders.
“You look pretty,” I said. “I like these flowered overalls. Can I borrow them someday? I think they would look good on me.”
Lacy grinned, her eyes shining for only a moment before she did something that I could remember doing all my life. She ducked her head and hid the smile. Behind me, Mrs. Gibson sighed heavily, her disappointment like a cloud in the air. I suppose it was hard for her to understand why Lacy stayed closed within herself. Mrs. Gibson didn’t know what it was like to feel the way Lacy felt—small and helpless and afraid of everything.
When you’re afraid of everything, the thing you are most afraid of is happiness. You’re afraid to step into even a little piece of it, because you know that as soon as you do, someone will slam the door, and you’ll be trapped in the darkness again, remembering how the light felt.
It’s easier never to know the light at all.
Lacy pulled her hand away and looked past me toward the door. Standing up, I glanced at Mrs. Gibson, who had turned her back to us, her shoulders trembling with withheld tears.
Lacy slipped past me and into the armory, and I let her go. I didn’t want her to see her grandmother crying and know she was the cause of it.
I stood beside Mrs. Gibson, not knowing how to comfort her. “She’ll be all right,” I told her. “Sometimes it’s just hard to understand things when you’re a kid.”
Looking up at the sky, she dabbed her eyes with her hankie. “I don’t want her life to be hard. I don’t want her to hurt this way.”
“I don’t think my mama wanted me to, either.” I thought of the times Mama cried and told me she didn’t want my life to be the way it was. “Sometimes it just happens.”
“It’s my fault.” Mrs. Gibson wiped her eyes again, unfolded the hankie, and blew her nose like a foghorn. “I been a mean, stubborn old lady, and I drove her father away because I didn’t like that gal he married, and that’s why I don’t know Lacy enough to be a help to her. I’m just one more stranger she don’t know and don’t like. The only thing she likes about me is my old cat, Mr. Whiskers.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to all that. As far as I could tell, a lot of it was true. Mrs. Gibson could be a mean old lady. Once she got her mind made up about somebody, it took something like a tornado to change it. “Sometimes things like that take time.”
“I ain’t got time!” she wailed, wadding the hankie in her fist and punching it into her pocket, her back turned to me. “I’m an old lady, and I’m losin’ my memory, and I can’t leave my life with all this meanness in it. God ain’t gonna let me. He’s gonna keep sending me back until I straighten out all this mess and keep the promises I made. That’s what that angel come to tell me. I gotta set things right this time, get shed of all this meanness in me. God done turned me back from heaven once, and …” She paused. Gasping in a breath, she turned and pressed her fingers to her mouth, shocked by what she had said to me.
I stood looking at her, as dumbfounded as she was. We gaped at each other, both wondering what to say now. She had sounded crazy. Even she knew that.
Except the part about her losing her memory. That explained a lot of things—like why she would sometimes ask me the same question two or three times in a day, or why she sometimes looked at me for an instant the way she used to before the tornado, or why she kept forgetting Dr. Albright’s name.
Was that why she was so desperate to find the notebooks? Because she couldn’t remember things without writing them down? I could tell by looking at her that she didn’t want me to know.
Silence stretched like a tightrope between us. “I don’t think you want to be mean to people,” I said finally. “It’s just a … well, sort of a habit, I guess. People can change habits, if they want to.”
“I been formin’ this habit a long time.” She sighed. “It’s turnin’ out to be a hard one to break.”
“You could start by being nicer to Mr. Jaans. All he wants is for you to treat him with a little kindness.”
Pressing a hand to her chest, she craned her neck back, as if she couldn’t believe I had said that. “That … that goes way back.” She coughed.
“Maybe so.” I felt strangely bold. “But if you’re trying to make God happy, that would be a good way. Mr. Jaans isn’t a bad person. He’s just trying to get by the best way he can, like everybody else.”
Flaring her nostrils and widening her eyes, she peered around my shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “He done some bad things in the past.”
“Everyone has. You just said you had. A bad past is like gristle. You can either starve to death chewing on it, or you can spit it out and see what else is on the table.”
Mrs. Gibson blinked at me, coughing softly, as if that piece of gristle was stuck in her throat.
Finally, she pointed a finger indignantly toward the door. “That man turned my head and talked about marriage, and all the while he was sparkin’ my baby sister, Ivy. He run off with her when she was just fifteen. Said he was gonna take us to a USO dance. He sneaked Ivy out of there and never brought her home. Come to find out, he’d got her pregnant, and they had to get married, and it was the shame of the county. The only reason he was sparkin’ me was because I was old enough that Mama would let me date, and then Ivy could come along with us. That was the only way he could see Ivy, and he knew it. Once he and Ivy run off, everyone in the whole county knew it, too.”
“Oh …” I murmured, wondering what kind of quicksand I had stepped into.
“So you can see why I ain’t friendly with him.”
“Uh … uh-huh.”
“And you can see why I ain’t gonna go makin’ nice with him, actin’ like nothing ever happened. He talked Ivy into getting married too young, and she shouldn’t of been having babies, and she died trying to birth that baby. His baby. It was a terrible thing. He had the funeral for her and the baby—buried them right in the casket together, and didn’t give my family one single say in the funeral or anything. Then he went off to the war, and by the time he come home again, he brought a new wife with him, and bought that place right d
own the road from us. He went right on like our Ivy never existed at all, and we had to watch it year in and year out. I ain’t ever gonna forgive him for it.”
I looked at the tents shuddering in the breeze below, not knowing what to say. Mr. Jaans had shown such kindness to me and Mama. I couldn’t imagine that he would do the cruel things Mrs. Gibson was talking about.
“Maybe he really loved Ivy,” I said, thinking of the words from the old letter I had found in our yard and how much that old couple must have loved each other. “Maybe he moved back here because he wanted to be close to her. Maybe he did what most people do.” What my mama did. “Maybe he just did the best he could to go on when his life wasn’t what he thought it was going to be.”
She shook her head, hugging her arms around herself as a whippoorwill started singing somewhere close by. Finally I turned away, leaving her there, and went inside to get Drew and Nate.
Lacy was sitting beside Mr. Jaans’s bed with a red string around her fingers, learning how to make a cat’s cradle. “Then … I do this … one?” she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be talking to him.
“That’s right, precious.” Mr. Jaans smiled at her, his aged, trembling hands guiding hers. “All right, see. That’s cup and saucer. Right. See? You’ve got it. Hook your thumb in there like this now.”
Lacy’s lips lifted into a smile. For a minute she forgot to be afraid.
I motioned to Drew, and he helped Nate to his feet. Mr. Jaans gave us a quick wink, then went back to helping Lacy.
Mrs. Gibson came in the door. I motioned for her to stop, then pointed at Lacy and Mr. Jaans.
“Sssshhh. Listen,” I whispered.
Mrs. Gibson crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes at them, but she didn’t say anything or step closer, or stop them from weaving the string.
“This one looks like … a kitty cat,” Lacy said.
Mrs. Gibson’s eyes widened and she glanced at me, then back at Lacy and Mr. Jaans. Mrs. Gibson’s arms fell to her sides, and she leaned against the wall.
“Let’s go, Jenilee,” Drew whispered from the doorway.
I turned and followed them.
In the doorway, I stopped and looked back at all the pictures taped to the walls. They fluttered in the breeze from the doorway, whispering in the still air, a thousand stories, countless memories, now patched together like an enormous, murmuring quilt.
CHAPTER 18
EUDORA
I watched Lacy and June Jaans weave that string, him helping her move her hands this way and that, and her talkin’ to him like she was a normal little girl. Her big eyes sparkled with joy as he praised how quick she was learning cat’s cradle.
Why? I thought. Why can’t I get her to light up like that? Lacy tangled the string and gave a frustrated groan, then smiled a little at him. He grinned back, his teeth looking straight and white against the gray stubble of beard grown over his thin face. I remembered how I used to like his smile. I remembered how, when that boy grinned at me, something went warm and soft and fluttery inside me. I didn’t want to remember it, but I did. I guess, in a way, I always had.
“Come on, Dora,” he would say to me back then. “How about a smile from the prettiest girl in school?” I’d giggle and blush and feel lighter than air.
Nobody else ever made me feel like that—not even Olney, though I loved him dearly and we made a good life together. That wild, fluttery feeling only comes with a powerful dose of first love. What made it all the worse was that June give me a first dose of heart-break, too, and he was the one who took my sister away from me.
Lord, Eudora, what are you doin’, standing here thinking about all this now? You got a hate for him that’s as big and black and solid as the cloud that carried that tornado.
I heard Jenilee’s voice in my head. You could start by being nicer to Mr. Jaans. All he wants is for you to treat him with a little kindness.
I could still see her looking at me with those big, doe brown eyes and telling me how to forgive. I wondered if God would really ask something so hard from me. I wondered if, the same way He made Jenilee the one to pull me from the cellar, He was going to make old June Jaans the one to pull Lacy from the pit she was in.
Thick silver hair fell over June’s forehead as he bent forward to help Lacy with her cat’s cradle. In the blink of an eye, I saw the young boy I knew all those years back. It come on me so quick and powerful that I moved a step closer, seeing a ghost. June drew back like a startled mule, and looked at my face like he couldn’t imagine what I was thinking.
I’m sure he couldn’t. I was thinking that, considering he’d kept himself pickled for the last six years since his wife died, he was still a pretty good-lookin’ man.
Lordy, Eudora, what in the world is wrong with you? There had to be something wrong with me if I was thinking that way about June Jaans. Jenilee Lane must of put some kind of hex on me.
June turned back to Lacy. He helped her move the string again, then leaned close. “There, now, show your grandma.” He pointed at me and patted Lacy’s arm. “You done made it all the way to cat’s cradle this time. Now all you got to do is go catch that old cat and put him in there for a nice little catnap.”
Lacy made a little sound in her throat, something that might of been the beginning of a laugh, and she held up the cat’s cradle. “Granny … do you think … Mr. Whiskers will fit?” It was the first thing she had said to me since right after the tornado.
I come closer and sat down in the chair beside the cot, moving real careful, like I was trying not to startle some wild creature. I didn’t want that smile to flit away. I wanted to call Weldon and Janet over, but I was afraid that would ruin things.
“I think he might like it fine. Maybe soon we can get out to the house and see if we can get him to come on up for a nap. Weldon said Mr. Whiskers had been eatin’ the food he’s been leavin’ at the old home place, but that little cat is sure keepin’ himself hid around there. Maybe if he catches sight of you, he’ll come on up. You and that old cat are pretty good friends.”
The smile drifted off Lacy’s face, and she dropped her fingers from the cat’s cradle, then unwound it, and started the loop again.
“There you go. That’s the way,” June said. “It’s a pretty fun game, ain’t it? Makes your brain and your hands work together. That’s good for ya.” He glanced at me and winked one blue eye. “Back in your grandma’s and my day, why, we kids knew how to have fun with little things we could find around. We didn’t need no five-hundred-dollar TV video game to have fun.” He tapped a finger on Lacy’s forehead, and the corners of her mouth lifted upward. “I told my grandson exactly that the last time I saw him when they were out to visit two summers ago. He lives in Germany, because his daddy’s in the army, and that’s a long, long way off, so I don’t get to see him much.” June looked sad, and right then I felt sad for him. I’d always had a mess of grandkids around me.
Lacy nodded, frowning as she dropped a finger and messed up her string. “I don’t see my mama much. She lives in Tulsa, and that’s a long, long way off, too.”
June sniffed, then reached up and scratched his nose. “I know, child, and that’s a hard thing, ain’t it? But I think that’s why we got friends and neighbors—so it’s like we got a whole great big family around us all the time.”
“Oh,” Lacy whispered, frustrated because the string was knotted up. She set it on the bed, then stood up and wandered off, looking at the pictures on the wall.
June sighed, watchin’ her go. “She’s got a hard row to hoe, don’t she?”
“Her mother ain’t any good.”
June lay back against his bed. “Lacy don’t know that. All she knows is that’s the only mama she’s got. Every critter wants to be loved by its mama. Maybe her mama will come around.”
“I doubt that.” Talking to him about Lacy’s mama give me a double dose of bad medicine.
“You never know. Sometimes you have to be patient. You’re awful ha
rd on people, Eudora.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but then that city doctor come in the door and walked over to us. I stood there looking at him, trying to recall his name. Always Right … no, not Always Right, Albright. Dr. Albright. I was going to have to jot that down somewhere so I could jog my memory.
“How are you feeling tonight, June?”
“Oh, fair to middlin’, I reckon,” June answered. “A little better now that all the excitement’s died down. This is some hospital you’re runnin’ here, Doc. I feel like I’m on Wheel of Fortune.”
Dr. Albright chuckled. “Well, fortunately we don’t have too many patients left. Mostly just pictures and a few curious reporters now.” He pointed a finger at me. “To change the subject, I was thinking about what we were talking about earlier.”
My mind was as blank as a summer sky. Panic scampered through me, because I couldn’t recall talking to him earlier. I remembered the newspaper reporters and the cameras… .
“About Jenilee,” he said, wheeling a hand in front of himself, trying to crank up my memory like an old tractor engine. “I had asked you earlier about whether she’d be interested in the summer internship program through the Vista Ridge hospital system. The purpose of the program is to help disadvantaged kids pursue a college education, particularly careers in medicine.”
I nodded slowly, recalling standing on the steps with Weldon and Dr. Albright, talking about whether Jenilee would think about leaving Poetry if she got the chance. “Well, Doc, I don’t know. Her family ain’t got any money to help her.”
The doctor nodded. “The program is designed to help kids work their way through school on a combination of work-study credits and grants. I understand that Jenilee’s grades aren’t outstanding, but I have friends on the board of directors, and I could write a recommendation for her. Given everything that’s happened here, she deserves a chance, if she’s interested. She’s a remarkable young woman, and she has a God-given gift with people.” There was a flicker of something in his eye that made me wonder again why he was so interested in Jenilee.
