Matt Home had a young politician’s blond good looks and polished smile. Nina figured he had the county attorney’s job locked up in the next election, and after that, the sky was the limit. In the meantime, he walked a careful line in the cases he took. She could see his agile mind weighing the pros and cons of this one.
“I’m doing this for Hattie,” Nina insisted. “I’ve put it off as long as I can, but the doctors say she’ll never get better. Her lucid moments are fewer and farther between. It’s not the money, Matt. You know that. Heaven only knows, there’s little enough of that. It’s the land. Hattie’s life was that land. I can’t let them steal it.”
“You can’t stand in the way of progress, Nina.” Matt steepled his fingers against his chest as he retreated into a leaning position against the back of his leather chair. “I think we can keep the incompetency hearing quiet. People know how hard you’ve worked to help Hattie. They’ll understand this is just a legal maneuver. But the cellular tower has to go in there, Nina. It’s the only suitable hill in the whole county.”
“They can put the blamed thing on top of the bridge, then,” she said emphatically as she rose from the chair. “If you won’t do this for me, Matt Home, I’ll take it to a lawyer in Paducah. There are plenty of people behind me on this one. I’ll get a petition. And if I find you’re working for those damned phone people, I’ll tell the world how you’re robbing a sick old lady.”
Matt rose with her, holding out a steadying hand. “Now don’t go off half-cocked, Nina. We go a long way back. I’ve never seen you like this. Hattie’s illness has been too hard on you. You’re stressed out. You should take a break, have a vacation, get away from all this for a while. I’ll have the papers all ready when you return. It will be very simple, very quiet, just a legal transfer giving you power of attorney. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
“I have to worry about a damned phone company coming in and tearing up Hattie’s Hill while I’m gone. I’m not quite that much of a fool. You get those papers drawn up now, Matt. If you don’t, I’m out of here.”
Furious for the second time that day, Nina slammed from the inner office on the second floor of the one and only bank building in Madrid, Kentucky. Take a vacation, she fumed. Stressed out. Hell, yes, she was stressed. But she damned well wasn’t a hysterical female who needed placating. If she had any money at all, she’d hire an attorney in Paducah and have him research ownership of that mobile phone company. She’d bet a week’s wages Matt Home was on their payroll.
Not stopping to gossip with Matt’s secretary in the outer office, Nina stormed down the stairs, furious at herself for losing her temper, furious at Matt for treating her like a mindless infant.
He’d been one year behind her in school, for pity’s sake. He knew damned well she was twice as smart as he was. She just didn’t have the money for the fancy schooling Matt’s family had provided for him.
Hitting the glaring sun outside, Nina stopped long enough to let her eyes adjust to the shimmering heat waves. Groceries, she reminded herself. Groaning that she still had to add shopping to a list of irksome chores, she headed across the street, promising herself a treat to make up for the day’s frustrations.
***
“Just tell me if I can keep that refrigeration unit running another year, Nina, that’s all I ask. I can pay the new registers off in a year if that unit doesn’t kick out.”
Holding her paper sack of groceries with the precious box of Breyers chocolate ice cream ticking inside like a time bomb, Nina gazed impatiently at the Piggly Wiggly owner. As with Matt, she and Howard had attended grade school together. Except for his thinning hair, Howard hadn’t changed one iota from the mama’s boy who’d sucked his thumb then.
“Howard, I’m not a psychic. I haven’t any idea if your refrigerator will give out this year or next. But if you don’t start setting it at zero, your ice cream won’t be worth diddly-squat. I’m tired of taking home cream soup.”
“You told me when that other unit was about to crash,” he reminded her. “But you didn’t tell me until after I’d already signed a new contract for roof repair. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”
“Then you’d better start saving more money out of your profits for repairs to this ratty old building instead of spending it on new bass boats, Howard. That’s what I tell my students. No one saves money against a rainy day anymore. It’s spend, spend, spend. You’d do better to build a nest egg and pay cash.” Knowing she sounded like a prosy, frustrated spinster, Nina shifted the heavy sack from one arm to the other. She hated it when she sounded like this, but people never learned.
Somebody had to teach them. “And I’ll give you one more piece of advice. You won’t increase profits for that nest egg unless you start stocking the kind of items tourists expect in a real grocery store. Why can’t you try some of that fancy Haagen-Dazs ice cream, or some of those Oriental vegetables they have in the Kroger up in Paducah?”
“My customers won’t pay a dollar and a half for ice cream bars, and can you imagine Ethel and Harriet buying Chinese walnuts or whatever? Don’t be ridiculous, Nina.”
“Chestnuts, Howard. They’re water chestnuts. And they’re good for you. The tourists would buy them.”
“Well, the tourists are only here three months out of the year, and I have to make a profit for twelve. Don’t tell me how to run my business and I won’t tell you how to teach school.”
Nina grinned and surrendered before that familiar attitude. “I know. You’re running the place the way your daddy did, and what was good enough for him is good enough for you. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Good luck with your refrigerator, Howard. But you’d better take a look at that meat grinder Sadie’s using. It’s grinding mighty peculiar.”
She swung out into the parking lot, smiling at having thrown Howard into another dither. They’d known each other forever, and he still hadn’t learned she knew how to push all his buttons. But then, his mama never had been real smart either.
She wouldn’t let the level of intelligence—or lack thereof—in Madrid bother her today. She had half a gallon of ice cream in her sack to top off the double fudge brownies she’d just bought. After a day like today, she intended to reward herself with absolute decadence. If she had someone to share with, she would have added real whipped cream, but cream separated if it didn’t get used up quickly. She couldn’t eat an entire bowlful by herself.
She still hadn’t quite got the hang of living alone. Aunt Hattie used to join her in these occasional bouts of indulgence.
They’d turn an old Andy Williams record up loud, sit on the front porch, put their feet up, and eat bowls of double fudge chocolate whipped cream surprises. This time of year, they’d cover it with strawberries. Then they’d laugh and make plans and just enjoy the sunshine.
Nina did that on her own now, pretending Hattie still sat beside her. She couldn’t get over to Hopkinsville today to visit Hattie, so she would turn up Andy Williams and talk to herself about the plans for the new greenhouse. On Nina’s teacher’s salary, Hattie’s dream of a botanical garden was progressing slower than a snail through sand, but Nina kept working at it. Even though Hattie didn’t understand Nina’s grand dreams these days, Nina still related her latest achievements when she visited.
Each summer she inched infinitesimally closer toward the basic assets needed for the garden. By building her own greenhouses she figured she could grow most of the more common plants needed in this area. So she worked hard, saved every penny, and dreamed.
Nina frowned as a rust-red pickup chugged into the BP filling station next door. Lowering her sack of groceries into her aging Toyota hatchback, she hollered at a teenager heading across the parking lot in the direction of the BP. “Billy, tell that driver he’d better have his engine looked at before he takes off.”
The teenager waved his icy Pepsi can in greeting. “Sure thing, Miss Toon.” Grinning, he glanced at the truck’s out-of- state plates. “But he ain
’t gonna listen.”
Nina shrugged. That wasn’t her problem. In her experience, men seldom listened when a woman told them something they needed to know. Examining the idea further, she supposed they seldom listened, period. She knew perfectly well the stranger getting out of his pickup and filling up the tank would look at Billy as if he were some kind of backwoods con artist trying to rip him off for a valve job. She supposed she could go over there and inform him that Billy gained nothing by the warning, but that would lead to other explanations, and she didn’t handle explanations well. People around here just accepted her warnings the way they accepted Miss Tansy’s eccentric hats. Except for Howard, of course. He always wanted more.
As Nina cranked her engine, she glanced over at the small tableau at the filling station. Sure enough, Billy stood there earnestly talking to the stranger, while the stranger merely nodded with impatience. She didn’t have her glasses on and couldn’t see the man clearly, but judging by the long hair on the back of his neck and the athletic set of his shoulders beneath a tight black T-shirt, she’d say he wasn’t a typical fishing enthusiast.
Swearing at herself for forgetting to put on the wretched new glasses again, she rummaged through her purse. The ice cream would melt if she didn’t freeze it soon. She found the blasted glasses, untangled the gold chain she’d hoped would keep her from losing them, and jerked them on.
The stranger entered the station to pay for the gas. Nina glanced at the huge motorcycle in the back of the pickup. Harley-Davidson, no doubt. The man looked like that kind. She bet he had a leather jacket slung over the truck seat.
As she pulled out of the lot, she caught a glimpse of a longhaired teenager in the passenger seat. Brothers, she figured. A man with black hair that thick and unmarred by gray couldn’t be old enough to have a kid that age. Why would two motorcycle thugs come to this backwater fishing retreat?
It didn’t matter. She had enough worries of her own without borrowing others.
At a signal from Ethel Arnett, Nina stopped her car in the middle of Main Street. “Main Street” was a euphemism for the two-lane county highway running through the town’s center. The Piggly Wiggly and other businesses on either side of the highway had installed sidewalks for the convenience of their customers, but they may as well have left the dirt roads and boardwalks of a prior era. The inhabitants still treated the road as a horse trail.
“Hi, Ethel. How’s the bake sale coming?”
The older woman leaned against Nina’s car door and fanned herself. “We’ll have a hundred cakes or more, I reckon,” Ethel drawled. “We oughter raise more than last year. The committee thought flowers might look nice on the tables. Have you got anything we can use?”
Nina grinned. She’d known what Ethel wanted when she hailed her. The church ladies had more sense than to ask her to bake a cake. “The roses are gorgeous this year. Why don’t you send Dottie out for what she needs? You know I can’t arrange them like she does. I have ice cream in the back. I’d better get going. See you later, Ethel.”
The old pickup from the gas station gave a roar of disapproval and sped around her before she could shift into drive. Strangers in the area didn’t take kindly to the local custom of stopping cars in the middle of the road so pedestrians and drivers could gossip.
Nina didn’t waste much time worrying about what tourists thought. They came and went with the seasons. The rest of the town relied on them for a living, but she didn’t. She thanked the good Lord and Aunt Hattie for that. By the time school started in the fall, Nina had usually mended her frayed patience by puttering in her greenhouses and was ready for the high-energy chaos of high school again. If she dealt with the summer tourists as others did, she’d not have any patience left to mend.
Instead of turning up the road to the interstate, the pickup ahead of her roared on toward corn and soybean fields. Nina shook her head in dismay as she carefully steered her aging Camry in the same direction. That pickup wouldn’t make it the fifty miles to the next town. The driver would find himself stranded in a cow pasture. He could count himself lucky if he didn’t get shot by some farmer defending his marijuana crop in the woods. That had happened once a few years back.
Well, he’d better hope the truck broke down before she turned off on Hattie’s Lane. She wasn’t about to let that half- gallon of Breyers melt in this heat going after him.
With thoughts of ice cream floating through her mind and heat mirages puddling the highway, Nina almost didn’t see the van turning out of the gravel road ahead. She supposed some stupid tourist thought he’d find a shortcut to the lake that way, but she wouldn’t recommend anything but a four-wheel drive down that road. He was lucky the van still had its bottom.
The van picked up speed and disappeared around the wooded curve ahead. She hated that curve. The kids liked to fly down the road doing ninety at night. They inevitably took the wrong lane while cutting the curve, and drivers coming from the opposite direction didn’t know it until they came up on them. A carload of kids lost their lives just the previous year pulling that stunt in front of a semi.
She took the blind curve at a cautious pace, prepared to pull over if someone cut it too sharply from the other direction. Aunt Hattie had always said caution never hurt, and Hattie was seldom wrong.
Nina winced as she rounded the curve. The rusty pickup had stalled half off the road near the embankment ahead. The engine must have died before the driver could pull over. The boy stood in front of the cab, pushing it backward while the driver steered. She hoped they’d made it far enough down the road from the curve for the driver of the van to get over, because he was picking up speed.
Even as she thought that, Nina watched in horror as the van accelerated without veering into the left lane to avoid the stalled vehicle. Screaming, Nina slammed her own brakes as if she could halt the van that way. With her fingers clenched around the wheel in helplessness, she watched the van slam into the pickup’s engine compartment, still angled half on the road. She winced and shuddered at the resounding crash. The pickup spun off the road into the soybean field. The van never slowed down.
Sick to her stomach and trembling, Nina clutched her steering wheel and edged the Toyota off the side of the road. She couldn’t see more than the pickup’s spinning tires from here. The words “He didn’t stop” formed a continuous refrain in her head as gravel crunched beneath her wheels. How could he not stop? Was the driver insane? What in hell could she do?
“Missouri. LAW 119,” Nina muttered, halting the car near the spinning tires and disengaging the engine. “LAW 119.” She’d heard repeating something helped to remember it. She would remember that license plate number. She would have that scoundrel by the neck. But she didn’t have time to rummage for pencil and paper. She leapt from the car as soon as the engine stopped.
She heard the boy’s shouts of fury and breathed a momentary sigh of relief. She’d had a horrible dread of finding both occupants lying dead and bloody between the soybean rows.
The road had been built high between the low-lying fields, to avoid the traditional spring flooding. She stood on the edge and looked down. Apparently having jumped free of the collision, the boy appeared unharmed. He’d climbed up on the driver’s door where the truck lay turned on its side. Movie images of cars exploding upon impact unreeled in Nina’s head as she ran through the gravel and slid down the hill in her cheap Keds. Aunt Hattie had never given her instructions for a situation like this.
The boy had opened the cab door by the time Nina reached them. She didn’t see any imminent danger of flashing fire or smoke. The rear wheel still spun idly, and the gleaming chrome of the motorcycle now lay crumpled in the middle of soybeans. Heat waves rose off the black dirt. A cardinal chirped “pretty-pretty” somewhere in the trees behind them. She didn’t smell gas.
“Is he all right?” she called up to the teenager leaning in the open doorway.
“He’s out cold! We’ve got to get him out of here.”
The k
id sounded slightly hysterical. Nina couldn’t blame him. “We shouldn’t move him until the medics get here. We might make something worse.” Even as she said it, she realized how long it would take for an ambulance to arrive. The town never had organized an ambulance service. Some of the volunteer firefighters had training, but most of them would be out in their fields at this hour. And she didn’t know that she could trust them with a serious injury any more than she could trust herself.
“We’ve got to get him out!” The level of panic in the boy’s voice rose considerably.
“All right. Climb down from there.” She was an adult. She could handle this situation. As a teacher, she had learned the trick of taking command. “Go out on the road and flag someone down.” She glanced back at the road. They’d come almost ten miles from town. This far from the interstate, traffic dwindled, and the road led nowhere in particular. He’d be lucky to spot a combine.
The boy jumped down. Face pale with fear, he turned to her with brief hope in his eyes, hope that died as he caught a good look at her. “You can’t get him out,” he announced bluntly. “I’ll have to push the truck upright.”
Since the truck had slid down the embankment on its side, the wheels rested on the hillside. Pushing the truck up would do nothing more than set it at a precarious angle that would only turn it over again. Nina thought it safest lying flat just where it was, but she didn’t bother arguing with the terrified teenager. She already knew she didn’t have the strength for lifting a truck. She needed three-inch heels to reach five-four and managed a hundred pounds only when soaking wet.
“Let me take a look at him. I’ve had some first-aid courses. Can you drive?” she asked as she climbed up to where the boy had perched moments before.
“No. My ma wouldn’t let me,” he said with anger. “Now look. I could’ve taken your car and gotten help.” His voice brightened. “How about a cell phone?”
Blue Clouds Page 36
