by Lisa Wingate
I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to send her off somewhere alone. I didn’t know exactly what Dr. Albright had in mind.
June piped up before I got a chance to answer. “I think that would be a wonderful thing for Jenilee. Why, she’s been rescuin’ sick critters for as long as I can recall. She could darned near have a vet degree already, I think. She’s a smart girl, and good-hearted. I just think that would be a fine thing for her.”
“Hush, June!” I snapped. I was trying to get my thoughts clear, and all his talking was muddying up the waters. “I just don’t know what to say about that. I don’t even know if she’d think about going. Poetry ain’t got much in the way of good things to offer her, but she’s been here all her life. She’s mixed up with that Shad Bell. I got a feeling she’s thinking to settle in with him and go that route in life.”
June shook his head. “Well, that’d be a pure shame.”
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s a good thing. I’m just sayin’ that’s what I think she’s got in mind. She’s come out of her shell a lot these last days, but it’s a long way from here to some college.”
“Ain’t for anybody else to say,” June barked. “It’s her choice. I think you ought to talk to her about it, Doc. See what she says.” He crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at me. I reckon he didn’t figure I had Jenilee’s best interests in mind, given the way I’d felt about her in the past.
“That’s true enough,” I agreed. “But, Doc, I guess I’ll just come right out and ask what’s been bothering me for a while now. I’m wondering why it is that you have such a big interest in Jenilee.”
The doc drew back, surprised by the question, and put out that I would ask. I guess he thought nobody noticed the strange way he looked at her. “I …” He stopped for a minute, like he was thinking about how to answer. “I think she’s a young lady with great potential. She’s obviously very intelligent, she’s calm in a crisis, and she has a natural talent for medicine. She clearly already has quite a bit of medical knowledge. I’ve worked with med students who couldn’t have handled a triage situation as well as she did.”
I thought for a minute about what he said. It still didn’t explain the way he looked at her.
June piped up like he had some say in it. “I—I guess we’d just have to talk to her about it. I’ll ask her if you want. She don’t know you very well yet, Doc.”
Dr. Albright nodded. “Let me know what she says. I’ll probably be heading back to Kansas City tomorrow afternoon. I can leave my card and the name of the director of the internship program. Jenilee can call if she has questions.”
I looked from one man to the other, and wondered what in the world they thought they were talking about. It was just like a couple of men to cook up a rainbow stew and forget all the practical details.
“I’ll talk to her,” I told them. “And it may not be tomorrow. She’s got her little brother with a broke leg to take care of, and their farm, and her father still in the hospital in bad shape.” And if that sidewinder comes home, she’ll stay right there and take care of him. She’ll never leave Poetry if he comes home. You can bet on that. “She ain’t gonna be ready to even think about the kind of things you two are talkin’ about. You gotta give her some time.”
“There ain’t time.” June glared hard at me. “You heard that Shad fella in here earlier hollering for her.” He pointed a finger at me, and give me a stare that made me step back. “Eudora, you know and I know, if that girl don’t get out of here now, she never will. She’ll end up settlin’ down with someone who don’t deserve her, and spending her whole miserable life here in Poetry.”
“The internship program starts in four weeks,” Dr. Albright added. “If she didn’t start with this group, she would have to wait a year. From what you’re both saying, she can’t afford the delay.”
“She can’t.” June nodded his head hard, then sucked in a breath and groaned, lying back against the pillow and rubbing his ribs.
“Lay still, you old fool,” I grumbled at him, trying to get my mind to think. “But, June, she ain’t gonna be willing to do anything until she knows about her daddy, and she ain’t gonna leave that little brother of hers. She ain’t gonna do it. You know that.”
“There has to be a way.” June closed his eyes. “We just gotta think. We gotta think of a way to make things work out. If she stays here, it’ll be one more wrong thing on top of a bunch of other wrong things we let go on right down the road all these years.”
I let out a long breath and rubbed my eyes as they started to sting. “I wish I had the answer, but I don’t.”
I met June’s gaze, and I couldn’t believe the two of us were sitting there talking like friends. If we didn’t share much else, we shared a load of guilt because we had turned our backs on them three little Lane kids down the road. We should of helped their mama years ago, when she started showin’ up in town with bruises and scrapes she couldn’t explain. We should of helped her get out, make some other kind of life. A better life.
I, more than anyone, should of done it, because I promised I would. But it seemed too hard a thing to do then, and it seemed too hard a thing to do now.
Wanting something impossible don’t make it possible. My mama used to say that to me. My mama was a practical woman, and she didn’t believe in dreaming big.
I sighed, looking at the doctor and then at June, two strange partners for me to have. “I’ll talk to her about it tomorrow. I’ll ask after her father and her brother, and if it seems like she’s willing to listen at all, I’ll talk to her about it. If Doc Howard’s back by then, maybe he can help me. I ain’t got no idea what she’ll say.”
“I think she might surprise you.” Dr. Albright turned to leave, drumming the tips of his fingers against each other. He looked like a man who was used to getting what he wanted. “If there’s anything I can do to help, or if she has any questions, please let me know.”
“I’ll ask her,” I said, getting that strange feeling from him again, almost like he thought he had some special right to Jenilee and we were getting in the way of it. “I don’t think she’ll talk to you about it. She don’t talk much to people she don’t know.”
“We’ll see,” the doc said, then walked out the door into the night.
I let my face fall into my hand. It felt like someone was beating a rug clean in my forehead. “It don’t seem very possible, June. I almost hate to even bring it up with her. I’m afraid I’m gonna open a door, and it’s gonna get slammed right back in her face.”
“Have a little faith, Eudora,” June said. The scratchy-old-man sound was gone, and I heard the soft, smooth voice of that boy from New Orleans. Just a hint of Cajun lilt. “We’ll find a way. It’ll be a right thing we can do together. We ain’t done too many right things together in the past, have we?”
“No, we ain’t.” I sighed. “We pretty much been bad to each other.”
“Reckon now’s as good a time as any to start changing things.”
I felt the warmth of his hand covering my fingers where they rested on his bed. I didn’t move away, and his fingers tightened around mine, trembling at first like one of them poplar leaves in the wind, then turning steady, warm, solid.
We sat that way for the longest time. Finally I heard Weldon and Janet coming back across the room, ready to go home. June give my fingers a last squeeze.
I felt something strange come into my cheeks, and all of a sudden I knew I was blushing for the first time in probably thirty years. I turned the other way in a hurry, got up, and started a stiff-legged hobble toward the door.
“Good night, Eudora,” the old coot called after me.
“Night, June.” I rushed on out that door like I had a hound on my tail.
Later on, as I lay on Weldon’s sleeper sofa, with Lacy curled up next to me, I wondered what in the world had come over me.
Jenilee must have hexed you with her fairy dust, Eudora. You ain’t actin’ like yourself.
I thought ab
out June and Ivy, and how afraid they must of been, running off like that, young teenagers getting married in some strange town in the dark of night, expecting a baby. I thought about June working hard those last few months of high school, trying to finish up his schooling, trying to support Ivy. I remembered him so tired from working at the sawmill that he could hardly keep his eyes open in school while the rest of us were laughing and talking about dances and such.
I thought about him watching the baseball team finish up the season without him, and him realizing that he wasn’t gonna be going away to A&M college to play baseball.
I realized how sad he must of been, and how much he give up to be with Ivy, and how much he must of loved her. It must of broken his heart to put her in the ground holding his baby, the only baby he ever ended up having.
When he married again, it was to a young widow with two small babies of her own, and she couldn’t have any more after that. He loved her anyway, and he loved those children, and if I hadn’t of hated him so much, I would of seen that he was a good husband and father. His wife was a good woman, but she wasn’t my sister, Ivy.
I wondered now if he ever thought about that baby who died with Ivy—that tiny part of him that never had a chance at life.
Sleep come to me finally, and I dreamed of Ivy and that little girl who would have been June’s. She had Ivy’s long hair, dark and curly, and June’s sky blue eyes. When she smiled, she looked like June.
She and Ivy were picking wildflowers, somewhere far away, and they were happy. Ivy paused long enough to look across the field at me. She tried to say something, but, as always, I couldn’t hear the words.
They faded like the mist as the rattling of pots pulled me out of my dreams, and Lacy stirred in the bed beside me.
“Ssshhh,” I whispered, pulling the quilt over her.
“You all right, Mama Gibson?” I heard Janet holler from the kitchen.
“Yes, I’m all right.”
Lacy opened her eyes and rolled over on the pillow to look at me.
“Good morning, sweet one,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer, except with the littlest bit of a smile. At least that was something.
“I see you still got your red string.” I touched her little hand. The red string had been wrapped around her fingers all night while she slept. “Maybe later today we can go back and see Mr. Jaans and he can show you some more tricks with the string. I recall he knows quite a few. Would you like that?”
Lacy smiled wider and nodded. I saw a hint of the brightness she had showed June—just a small portion, but it was my portion. It was enough to fill me.
Squealing come from bedrooms down the hall as the rest of the kids woke up and started a fight about something. “Here, you kids stop that!” I shouted. I climbed from the bed and limped down the hall with my legs creaking and crackling.
“Toby’s been in here stealing my Easter candy, Granny!” Christi hollered. “I woke up and there he was in my basket!”
“Heaven’s sake, what’s this about Easter candy?” I walked into the girls’ room, where Christi and Cheyenne had Toby pinned on the bed.
In the corner, Anna pulled her pillow over her head and grumbled, “Tell them to be quiet. I’m sleeping.”
I looked around the room, and joy filled me like water running into a cup. It felt like such a normal day. Such a wonderful day. “Lands, Christi, that candy’s been in that basket for four months. If it ain’t rotten, somebody ought to eat it.”
“Well, he didn’t ask.”
Under the pile, Toby squealed and tried to say something with his mouth full of jelly beans.
A chuckle wound its way up from deep inside me. It was good to know that storm or no storm, children were still children. “I hear some little ones got too much grouchiness and not enough love this mornin’.” I stretched my arms open wide. “I think they need some hugs from their granny to take away all that orneriness.”
The girls squealed and ran from the bed, and Toby got to his feet and followed them, dropping a handful of jelly beans in the Easter basket on the way. I wrapped my arms around the three of them and squeezed hard. In her bed, Anna lifted her pillow and rolled her eyes; then she smiled and pointed to the doorway behind me.
Over my shoulder, I saw Lacy. I opened my arms again, and she come into the circle with the rest of them.
I held on to them for a few moments after they started to squirm and tried to get away. “Well, let’s get dressed,” I said finally. “Today’s a new day.”
I went to the living room and slipped on my clothes, then hobbled into the kitchen, still trying to get the oil back into my joints.
Janet shook her head at me as I come in. “Mama, you’re trying to do too much. You’ve got yourself all sore and crippled up.”
“I’ll be all right.” Normally I would of gotten irritated with her mollycoddling, but for some reason, it didn’t even bother me now.
You’re awful hard on people, Eudora, I heard June’s voice say in my head, and I knew I didn’t want to be that way—just one more stubborn, grumpy old lady in a world with too many grumpy old ladies already.
I poured water from the jug into glasses, then sat down and took a big swallow as Janet set out the breakfast plates. “You think I can borrow your car for a little while? I got a couple of errands to run this morning; then maybe later we can drive over to Hindsville and get some groceries at Shorty’s, if there’s anything left in the store.”
Janet looked relieved to be talking about normal things for once. “That sounds fine, Mama. The keys are on the mantel.”
The kids come rushing in, and we ate breakfast listening to them chatter about going fishing down at the creek. Lacy got a piece of toast and a cup of water, and for once she sat down with the rest of them.
I smiled at her. “I told Lacy later on I’d take her to the armory to see June. You kids might want to come along and see all the pictures. There’s some old ones there from when I was in the Watermelon court at the Poetry Fair. Don’t know where they come from, but them old pictures are quite a sight.” Laughter rumbled in my throat. “Lordy, that was some day! Me and some girlfriends and cousins got elected as the Watermelon Court, and Mazelle Sibley was hoppin’ mad she didn’t get picked. If ya look real close in the pictures, you can see her scowlin’ in the contestants’ row.”
The kids giggled.
“Can we go see later, Gran?” Anna asked. “I didn’t know they had pictures way back when you were young.” She grinned at me with a wicked twinkle in her eye.
“You just watch yourself, young lady.” I wagged a finger at her. “You ain’t had your hug yet this mornin’.”
Toby and Cheyenne started into a chant. “Anna needs a Granny hug. Anna needs a Granny hug. Anna needs …”
I stood up and kissed Anna on top of the head, then mussed her hair up for good measure and went to put my dishes away. “I’ll be back after a while.”
As I walked out to the car, I thought about June. I wondered what he would do now. He was too busted up to go home by himself, and he didn’t have any family close by to take care of him. Far away in Germany, his son and daughter-in-law probably didn’t even know what had happened in Poetry.
Reckon he’ll make out. He always does, I told myself. Ain’t got time to worry about June’s problems now, anyway. I got Jenilee to worry about, and that’s a big enough problem all by itself.
I climbed into the car and headed off to find Jenilee Lane, so I could finally live up to the promise I made so many years ago.
CHAPTER 19
JENILEE
I left the house while Drew and Nate were still sleeping. I woke feeling the need to be alone and think. I didn’t ask Drew if I could borrow his truck. I just got up and left.
I ended up at the armory, more from habit than anything else. I figured it would be nearly empty so early in the morning, except for Mr. Jaans and a few other people who were still sleeping there. I wanted to go inside and sit and look at
the pictures and be still for a while. So many conflicting emotions were at war within me. So many questions about what the day would bring.
I turned off the key and sat in the truck, watching the sky brighten over the misty purple hills.
If God can make a sunrise like that, why can’t He play my life like a movie on the morning sky, show me what is supposed to happen now? Am I crazy for thinking our lives can be different—Nate’s, mine, Daddy’s?
I need a sign. I need to know what’s right… .
The sound of a car door startled me from my thoughts, and I realized the Gibsons’ car had pulled alongside mine, and Mrs. Gibson was hobbling toward me. The look on her face said she had something to tell me. I climbed from the truck and met her at the bottom of the armory steps. My mind conjured the idea that she had somehow gotten word about Daddy, and she was going to say, Jenilee, word has come in about your daddy. He’s awake and he’s ready to come home. He’ll need you to take care of him, of course. Everything will go back to just the way it used to be… .
My stomach rolled, and my heart pounded like a hammer trying to drive a nail inside me.
“Jenilee, are you all right, child?” Her voice seemed far away.
“Yes,” I heard myself say, a small choked sound that lacked conviction. “I … just didn’t get much sleep last night. I … better … I better go home. Drew’s going to be wondering about his truck.” I wanted to get in the truck and drive—so far and fast that reality couldn’t catch me.
“I have a little something I want to talk with you about.” Mrs. Gibson took my arm and pulled me close, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Can ya spare a minute to sit here on the steps with me?”
“I really should go. It’s light already.”
“It’ll only take a minute.” She lowered herself to the steps, and I collapsed beside her. “You know I ain’t a person to mince words, so I’m gonna say some things straight out. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so if I do, just try to bear with me a minute, all right?”
