Word Gets Around

by Lisa Wingate

  “No thanks.” I sensed that we were about to get down to the real reason Donetta was hanging around this morning. I figured I might as well save her the time. “We had a talk about it. She’s not interested.”

  Donetta’s lips twisted on one side as she crossed the space and handed me my cup. “Oh, hon, she’s interested.” She sat down again, her long red fingernails tapping the handle of her mug. I felt like I was in the principal’s office for having failed to complete an assignment. When Donetta Bradford got down to business, all the sugar crust disappeared. She was five feet eight inches of big hair and determination.

  “Sometimes you just have to figure the chemistry’s not right,”

  I said.

  “Nate”—lowering her chin, she peered at me over the top of her glasses—“you’re old enough to know better than that. Anybody within six foot’a you two kids can see things cracklin’ like fatback on a griddle.”

  “She says she’s not ready.” Now I knew how those talk show guests felt. Dr. Donetta was on to me, and she wasn’t letting go.

  “Honey … ” Leaning back in her seat, she hitched up her glasses and gazed at the old, wavy plate glass windows as the sun slowly rose over Main Street and the long shadows faded in the light of a new day. “You can fool a lot of people, but you can’t fool a hairdresser. I know who’s got roots, who’s got big ears, whose scalp’s flaky, who buys cheap shampoo, and who’s got lipstick on their shirt collar. I know when I spot a match, and I know Puggy. I hadn’t ever seen her look at anybody the way she looks at you … ever. Now, sure, she feels like if she lets go the guilt about the accident, if she moves on and finds happiness again, it’d be wrong of her, but the thing is, her standin’ with her feet in the mud isn’t gonna change anythin’, or bring anybody back. I know Harvard Jr. wouldn’ta wanted that, and I don’t think Danny, as sorry as he was most of the time, God rest his soul, woulda wanted it either.”

  “Maybe you should try telling her that.”

  Donetta batted a hand and spat a puff of air. “Pfff. Hon, I have tried. A million times. That girl’s stubborn as a sow and twice as hard to move.”

  The analogy made me laugh, but Donetta didn’t laugh along with me. She was staring at the front windows, squinting as if she saw something in the play of light and shadow on the wavy glass. “You know, Nate. I’ll tell you somethin’ I learned a lot of years ago. If you wait for the perfect time, most often it ends up you waited too long. Sometimes God puts a new path under your feet, not because you think you’re ready to walk it, but because He knows that’s the way you need to go.” Her lips curved upward into a smile, and she added, “She’ll come around.”

  Chapter 19

  Lauren Eldridge

  The room was cool and shadowy. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed, but Aunt Donetta was sitting beside me, stroking my hair and trying to awaken me gently. I’d always loved Aunt Netta’s tender morning voice. At home when we were kids, there was no ceremony with my dad. Mornings began with the sound of his boots echoing across the floor and the screen door slapping as he went out to dump yesterday’s coffee grounds in the flower bed or bring in logs for the woodstove. If you didn’t hop up by the time he finished putting on the coffee or stoking the fire, you were likely to get a cup of ice dumped in your bed. When we stayed over at Aunt Netta’s, things were much more serene, and we could languish in a state of foggy bliss while the sweet scent of pancakes and bacon filled the house.

  My mind sifted through childhood memories, sprinkling them over the pillow like white flour as she tried to rouse me. After a night spent pacing the floor, letting worry and frustration defy every sleep-inducing technique known to man, I was groggy and bleary-eyed. It took me a minute to realize I was in the hotel, all grown up, and Aunt Netta wanted me to rise for church. She’d brought an assortment of clothing, just in case I hadn’t thought to pack church clothes myself.

  Reality fell like a lead overcoat. Last Sunday, by sneaking out to check on Lucky Strike and his goat, I’d avoided the issue of accompanying Aunt Netta to Sunday service. Now that I’d been here over a week, the idea of my skipping out of church a second time was unthinkable, but the idea of going was unthinkable, too. I couldn’t picture sitting in the third pew on the left, in the church where a small memorial service for Danny had taken place before his parents had his ashes transported to Dallas. If I’d been able, I might have protested their plans. Danny was the black sheep in his family. He hadn’t spoken to his parents since he dropped out of vet school, took up full-time rodeoing, and married me. I didn’t know how he’d feel about the big funeral in Dallas or the family cemetery as a final resting place. We’d never talked about anything like that.

  By the time I was fully aware of things in the hospital, two weeks had passed, and it was already done. I was in too much pain to argue—physically and emotionally. Aunt Netta told me all about the memorial services. I guess she thought it would help me gain closure. If she could have suffered through the surgeries, the head injury, and the broken bones for me, she would have done that, too.

  Which meant, of course, that there was no choice really, but to go sit in the family pew at Daily Baptist and try to focus on the sermon while friends and neighbors cast sympathetic glances my way. Afterward, we’d shake hands and they’d offer up kind words about Danny, and I’d act like we had been the happiest couple in the world.

  You can’t keep hiding forever, a part of me said. It’s time.

  The words were true enough. After coming upstairs early, I’d paced the floor all night, frustrated with life, frustrated with myself, frustrated with my inability to move forward. …

  Aunt Netta smoothed back my hair and kissed my forehead. “It’s a beautiful mornin’,” she said, then got up and opened the blinds, letting pink light spill into the room. “Start of a brand-new day. Rise and shine, darlin’.” She bustled around, straightening things and dumping a half-used cup of water into the bathroom sink. “I just found poor Nate asleep on that hard old sofa downstairs. He’d been up workin’ all night, bless his heart.” She hawkeyed me when she mentioned his name. “He said you turned in early. You feelin’ all right, darlin’?”

  “Sure,” I said, and then realized I’d just surrendered my last possible excuse for staying home this morning. I could hardly claim to be sick now. “Why?”

  “Oh, no reason.” Aunt Netta casually fluffed a heavy velvet drape that was dusty and crinkled with age. “Just if I were a single girl and I had a fella downstairs who looked like that, I wouldn’t be calling it an early night.”

  “Aunt Netta,” I admonished, but then I didn’t know what to say next, what excuse to give. “He lives in California.”

  “So.” She shrugged, arching a brow. “It’s a smaller world all the time—I saw it on Good Morning America. These days, people meet on the intra-net, and they fall in love before they ever even seen each other in person. I did hair on a girl like that. She was just passin’ through on her way from Austin to Omaha, Nebraska. She’d met a fella online. Wheat farmer. I gave her the Amber Anderson special. She wanted to look like a star when she met her beau.”

  “Nate and I are just working together, Aunt Netta,” I answered flatly. With The Horseman preparations coming to an end, the Daily Lovelorn was getting desperate to make something happen before we all parted ways and returned to normal life.

  Unfortunately, that very possibility was what had kept me up all night. I couldn’t stop thinking that in a couple days, Nate would be gone and I’d be back at work in Kansas. I wouldn’t wake up anymore looking forward to our walks together, or go to bed thinking about his silly jokes, trying to conjure the exact way he smiled—just a little twitch at one side of his lips that slowly spread until his eyes sparkled with it.

  “Oh, they were, too—that intra-net couple I did the hair for, I mean.” I had the feeling Aunt Netta was making up the story as she went along, but with her, you could never tell. The things that happened to her were often strange
r than fiction. “They were working together for … well, some big comp’ny I can’t think of right now. But that’s how they met, and then they got to chattin’ over the intra-net, and the rest is history. They fell in love. Isn’t that just wonderful? Somethin’ like that don’t happen every day— you meet someone and just know it’s right, I mean.”

  “I guess not,” I said blandly. “I’d probably better get ready for church. I need to wash my hair this morning.”

  “I could do it for you downstairs.”

  I pictured myself getting my hair washed and fluffed amid the scattered flotsam of The Horseman script—a captive audience while Nate looked on and Aunt Donetta shared stories of internet romance and things meant to be. “That’s okay. I don’t want to take up your morning. I’m not going to do anything fancy.”

  Aunt Netta frowned. “You should let me do somethin’ fancy. Fluff it up a little. You’re such a pretty girl, Puggy, and it is Sunday, after all. The higher the hair, the closer to heaven.”

  I pictured myself going back to church with the Amber Anderson special, like the Austin girl on her way to meet her cyber Romeo. “I figured I’d just pull it back.”

  Aunt Netta snorted. “Let it curl up cute. Don’t just put it in a ponytail holder. You got such nice hair.” Before I could escape, Aunt Netta had grabbed my hair and pulled out the band, spreading weary, dust-laden ringlets over my shoulders. “More like that,” she urged. “Only clean, of course.”

  She slipped the ponytail holder onto her arm. Unfortunately, it was the only one I had with me.

  “Aunt Netta,” I complained, stretching for the hair band, which she held out of reach.

  “See ya downstairs,” she said. “

  Everybody’s leavin’ about ten-thirty.” Everybody? I thought. Everybody who? Most of the time, Aunt Netta went to church by herself, because Uncle Ronald wasn’t inclined to attend.

  Aunt Netta paused in the doorway. “Oh, and they had to step up the time frame for the movie project. Mr. M. Harrison Dane’s comin’ here tonight at five. Isn’t that excitin’? It’s a big day in Daily!” She flashed a huge smile, then disappeared into the hallway before I could process the news or ask any questions.

  My mind spun as I got out of bed, showered, and prepared for church. Where was Nate? When did he find out about the change in Dane’s arrival time? Was he finished with the proposal? Was he in a state of panic?

  Behind that thought, there was another one that lay cold and heavy on my chest. By the end of the day, our work on the movie proposal would be over, for better or for worse. I could go home.

  The thought scratched like a thorn in my skin as I finished getting ready. I tried to concentrate on the basics. I left my hair down, put on a blue summer dress—one of those light, filmy things from India you can wad up and stick in the suitcase at the last minute. When I was finished, I stood in front of the mirror. I didn’t look too bad, which was inappropriate, perhaps. Maybe I should have brought a darker dress, something in the bland grays of grief. …

  But it had been two years. Maybe it was all right to wear a floaty blue dress after two years. …

  As soon as the thought crossed my mind, it was followed by the ravenous guilt that haunted every good thing, every pleasant thought, swallowed it whole and reminded me that I didn’t have a right to anything good.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. How long until a blue dress is just a blue dress?

  The mirror couldn’t answer. I knew it wouldn’t. Mirrors only confirm what you already know.

  I gave up and went downstairs. Aunt Netta was waiting in the back hall. “Everybody else went on ahead,” she said cheerfully, then stopped to look me over. “Oh, Puggy, don’t you look pretty!” Holding my face between her hands, she smiled from ear to ear. “There’s my girl. I’d give you a kiss, but that’d leave a lipstick scar.” Her eyes welled, and I fully understood how important this morning was to her. I was glad I hadn’t done anything to spoil it.

  We headed off to church arm-in-arm. On the way, she talked about the new carpet in the sanctuary and the ongoing debate over replacing the old theater seats in the back with pews. “Bob says it’s too much money, because we got perfectly good seats already, but then Betty Prine and her bunch say if we don’t get things updated, some folks’ll head over to First Baptist, McGregor.”

  Aunt Netta rolled her eyes. “By some folks, she means her and Harold, of course.”

  “I like the old seats,” I said, picturing Betty Prine, her basset hound husband, Harold, and the rest of the Daily Literary Society cronies in the front rows. A cloud of dread formed over my head and started raining little black droplets. I wished they’d head over to First Baptist, McGregor today.

  Fortunately, when we arrived at the church, Betty Prine and the Literary ladies were busy fawning over Justin Shay and Amber Anderson. They didn’t even notice Aunt Donetta and me slipping through the crowded foyer, which I think was Aunt Netta’s plan. We’d entered the sanctuary and settled safely in the third pew before Iris Mayfield pushed her walker in the back door, sat down at the organ, and began playing prelude music to call everyone to worship.

  The Eldridge pew filled as my father entered with Willie, Mimi, and Frederico, who was wearing one of my father’s old western suits and, oddly enough, looked good in it. Justin came down the center aisle shaking hands like a politician, hugging giddy women, and autographing church bulletins. Amber Anderson trailed along, seeming surprisingly embarrassed by all the fuss. She looked as though she wished she could just walk into church without generating an event.

  As the crowd filed in from the foyer, the church filled to capacity and beyond. Aunt Donetta got up to usher someone into the seat next to me as Brother Ervin took the pulpit and greeters rushed to set up extra chairs in the aisles. No doubt, Brother Ervin wished he had the draw of Justin Shay and Amber Anderson every Sunday. Attendance was up by fifty percent, at least. Normally, finding a seat wasn’t a problem.

  “Packed house,” the person beside me said, and I recognized the voice. When I turned around, there was Nate. He drew back, studying me, and said, “Wow. You clean up pretty well.”

  I was filled with sensations that had nothing to do with church.

  Fortunately, right then, the choir came in, and the service began with announcements. I felt people watching me as we stood to sing the first hymn, but then I realized they weren’t watching me at all. Every eye in the room was focused on the little knot of visiting celebrities. Brother Ervin even offered them a special greeting, then explained that he was going to have Amber sing after the sermon, because Daily Baptist hadn’t enjoyed a crowd like this in years, and he wanted to pretend that all the visitors were there to hear him talk. In the corner, a group of interloping Methodists jokingly pointed out that they’d gotten up and gone to early service down the road, and were on their second round for the day.

  Across the aisle from us, Pearly Parsons, who was more likely to be seen on a fenceline on Sunday morning than in church, lifted his chin, smacked his lips, and crossed his arms over his chest, impatient to get on with things. This morning, he’d even brought his crew along. They were lined up in the pew beside him, looking confused. They were dressed for work and no doubt wondering how they’d ended up in church this morning instead.

  As usual, there was a point to Brother Ervin’s greeting. It led right into the sermon. “Yes, I’ve got to say I’m pleased to see so many Dailyians and guests in the Lord’s house this morning’, amen?” He gestured acknowledgment to Justin, Willie, and company. “We’re all excited about this newest dose of fame for our little town. Why, between Amber’s big finish on American Megastar and now Justin Shay comin’ here, and this project out at the old Barlinger ranch, Daily hasn’t had excitement like this since the bald eagles nested out at Boggy Bend. It’s been something to see, especially for those of us who watched this old town go quiet, and the buildings close up, and the young folks move away.”

  Brother Erve gazed toward t
he back door as the crowd murmured in agreement, giving Justin and Amber appreciative looks. “It wasn’t so long ago, Daily was a broken place, but now we got the café full of people, and trucks of construction materials passin’ through on the way out to the old Barlinger ranch, and the new Amber Anderson souvenir shop open next to the washateria in the Prine building. Ol’ Harold even put up the money to fix the roof that’s been leaking for ten years, and that’s pretty close to a miracle in itself.” He paused, and the crowd chuckled. On the front row, Harold and Betty couldn’t decide whether they’d been insulted or praised, but finally Harold lifted a hallelujah hand in acknowledgment as Brother Erve went on.

  “Yes, there’s been a sure-enough case of Horseman fever around town lately, everyone pitchin’ in to bring food to the volunteers and construction crew at the ranch, and helping with the work out there. It feels good to do good, amen?”

  Brother Ervin paused, taking in a round of amens. Reaching behind the pulpit, he pulled out a sack, and the crowd grew silent. There was no telling, on any given Sunday, what Ervin Hanson would have in his paper bags. Once, he came in with a live bull snake hidden inside. Sometime later in the sermon, when he pulled the bag out again, it was empty. Ladies screamed and little kids crawled onto the pews, but Brother Ervin’s point was made. If we were half as worried about the lost people among us as we were about that snake underfoot, the church would be full to the brim every Sunday. Shortly before pandemonium broke out, he produced the snake, safely tucked in a glass container.

  Today, Brother Ervin had a set of spurs in his bag. Since that seemed like a fairly benign item, the crowd leaned in as he began to talk. I studied the spurs with interest. They were antique, the worn leather straps cracked and crisp, the heavy brass rowels darkened with the soft patina of age, testifying to the fact that many years had passed since the pinwheel of sharp edges had touched flesh.