The Scent of Lilacs

by Ann H. Gabhart

  He’d already covered this ground, and Wes had taken the roads off it, but it was as if he could almost see Jocie standing just out of sight motioning him to come that way. Or maybe it was an angel. He quit thinking about where he was driving and just drove. Each turn he made took him closer to the storm.

  His wipers slashed back and forth, but they were little use against the buckets of rain hitting his windshield. He slowed the car to a creep. He was going uphill now, but he had no idea where he was. He was lost in a sea of rain and lightning. Was this how the disciples had felt when the storm had overtaken them on the Sea of Galilee? And Jesus had slept through it. He knew the Father was in control. That’s what David needed to remember now. That the Lord was in control. David needed to give it over to him, to stop thinking he himself could do a better job of handling things than the Lord.

  Still, he didn’t stop. He kept pressing on the gas, kept creeping up the road. Hail the size of walnuts peppered the car. David hoped Wes had found shelter. And Jocie. Of course, Jocie. He couldn’t bear to think about her out in this alone. He could almost feel the Lord’s disapproving look, so he whispered, “Not alone, Lord. Never alone, Lord. Watch over her. Protect her.”

  Suddenly the roar swept past and was gone. Jocie warily opened one eye and saw grass. Still green. Still rooted to the ground. She opened the other eye and looked for Wes. He wasn’t on top of her anymore. She felt light. Too light.

  She rolled over and sat up. The world was no longer the same.

  She closed her eyes and slowly opened them again, but nothing was changed. Rather, everything was changed. The church was gone. Nothing was left but an open floor with the pulpit and one of the pews. Another pew sat in the middle of the churchyard.

  Everything else that had made up the church was gone. Doors, walls, windows, roof gone. Simply gone. Swept away. Except the big oak that lay twisted and torn asunder in the yard.

  “Wes,” she whispered as if she were afraid to yell for fear the wind would hear her and come back to get what it had forgotten. She stood up. The rain was gentle now, like tears falling out of the sky. “Wes!” She said it louder this time, but there was still no answer.

  She tried to pray, but somehow the wind had sucked all the prayers out of her already. Maybe she hadn’t made it through the storm. Maybe she was on the other side and that’s why everything looked so weird. “Don’t be stupid,” she told herself. “Churches wouldn’t get blown away in heaven.”

  She still didn’t see Wes, but his motorcycle sat on its handlebars across the road against the fence. On the other side of the fence the trees were still tall and straight, untouched by the storm. But where was Wes?

  Panic ballooned up inside her, and her heart began pounding. He couldn’t have been carried away with the church building. The rain mixed with the tears on her face as she screamed, “Wes!”

  She heard a groan, and her heart stopped pounding quite so hard. She scrambled over the fallen tree branches until she saw a boot among the leaves. For a moment she was almost afraid to look, but then there was another groan. Wes had to be alive to groan.

  She picked her way through the branches that covered him until she could see his face streaked with bright red blood from a gash on his head. He looked way too still, way too white. She tore a piece off her shirt to press against the wound on his head. “Don’t you dare die,” she told him. “You can go back to Jupiter, but you can’t die.”

  His eyes flickered open. He tried to smile. “I think I missed my ride to Jupiter.”

  Jocie put her head down on his chest, hugged him as best she could with the tree limbs in the way, and sobbed.

  “Stop all that caterwauling, Jo, and get this here tree off me. What in the world happened, anyhow?”

  Jocie sat up and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “It must have been a tornado. The church building is gone. Just gone.”

  Wes turned his head and tried to see. “I can’t see diddly squat for this tree in my face, but I reckon as how that proves what I’ve been telling you all these years. That if I ever did show up at a church, it would just fall down from the shock.”

  “This one didn’t fall down. I’d say it fell up.”

  Wes grimaced. “Up first, but no doubt down somewhere.”

  Jocie looked around. “Nowhere I can see. Maybe on Jupiter.”

  “I guess that could be. Old Mr. Jupiter might have decided he could use a church building up there.” Wes tried to lift his head again, but the tree branches were in the way. “If he was the one doing it, I wish he hadn’t dropped this tree on me. You think you can get me out of here?”

  Jocie pulled some of the branches back from his arms and chest. She had him pretty much in the clear except for the part of the tree that had trapped his right leg, but that limb was nearly as big around as she was. She couldn’t budge it.

  “Maybe you could wedge another branch under it and use that to lift it enough that I could wiggle free,” Wes said.

  Jocie found a strong-looking branch, jammed the end under the limb, and leaned her weight on it. Nothing happened. “I don’t think I can move it,” she said.

  “It might have given a little. Hold it there while I try to move my leg.” Wes mashed his lips together and tried to pull his leg free. His face went ghost white as fresh, red blood soaked his jeans.

  “Stop, Wes!” Jocie screamed. “You’re making it bleed.” She let go of the branch and knelt down beside him. She didn’t know what to do. She’d never seen so much blood.

  Wes pushed up on his elbows a few inches to look. “Does appear to be bleeding some. Funny it ain’t hurting all that much.” He dropped back to the ground. Jocie thought he’d passed out, but after a moment he said, “Well, I guess old Zell will be surprised. She always figured I’d get banged up on my bike, but who’d have thunk a tree would do me in instead.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Wes. We’ll get you out.”

  He looked straight at her. “And then what? It’s a long way to a doctor’s office. Heck, it’s a long way to a house if any houses are left standing around here. And for sure I ain’t walking nowhere anytime soon.”

  “I can go get help.”

  “That you can, Jo. Might be a good idea, in fact.” Wes shut his eyes. “You just go on down the road and find somebody. I’ll lay right here and wait on you.”

  She didn’t like the way he’d agreed with her so easily without arguing the best way to do it or anything. She banged him on the chest. “I’m not letting you just shut your eyes and give up.

  You have to fight.”

  He opened one eye and peeked up at her. “Fight what? I think I’m already down for the count.”

  “Nobody’s counting.” Jocie was crying again. “You can’t die. Not now. It would be all my fault, and I couldn’t stand it.”

  “The tornado wasn’t your fault, Jo.”

  “Maybe not, but you wouldn’t have even been out here if you hadn’t been looking for me. I shouldn’t have run away.”

  He opened the other eye. “Why did you run away? It ain’t like you not to talk to somebody.”

  “I did talk to somebody. Tabitha. She knew. And Zella knew. Did you know too?”

  “Know what?”

  “You know what,” Jocie said. “That Daddy isn’t my father.”

  “I ain’t never known that.” Wes lifted a hand up to touch Jocie’s face. “Your daddy has always been your daddy.”

  “But is he my father? I mean like in the Bible. Adam begat Seth, and Seth begat Enos. You know what I mean.”

  “I ain’t never exactly lied to you, Jo. Told you some interesting stories but never exactly lied. At least about anything important. So I can’t say for sure about the begatting. But wouldn’t you rather have a daddy than just be begatted?”

  Jocie almost smiled. “I don’t think that’s a word.”

  “We ain’t setting a story in type here. Anyway, your daddy’s out looking for you. He loves you maybe even more than I do, though I don’
t know how he could. And there’s no way I can claim any kind of kin to you. We’re not even from the same planet.” Wes smiled at her. “But no matter how much I love you, I’m gonna have to take a little rest. I’m seeing Jupiter circles.”

  “What are Jupiter circles?”

  “I ain’t sure, but I’m seeing them.” Wes shut his eyes.

  Jocie looked at his chest again. It was still rising and falling. She leaned down close to his ear. “I take it back. You can’t go back to Jupiter either. The Lord’s going to help us.” Jocie looked up at the sky that was clearing out and showing blue again. “You are, aren’t you, Lord? Please.”

  She’d barely gotten the words out when she heard a car coming up the road.

  David drove through the storm. The trees lining the roadside were bending and shaking, warring with the wind. He thought about stopping, but his foot kept pressing the gas. Besides, if he stopped, it might be under the very tree that lost the battle with the wind. Of course, he could get out of the car and burrow into the ditch beside the road the way Miss Gertrude had advised. It would probably be the sensible thing to do, what with the funny greenish cast to the air and the menacing black clouds he could see through the frantically dancing treetops. But tornadoes came in the spring, not midsummer. He kept telling himself that. At least the hail had stopped and the rain was letting up.

  He was almost to the top of the hill when he came around a curve into the storm’s battlefield. The wind had definitely won. Trees lay like matchsticks tossed out for a game of pick up sticks, but the roadway was amazingly clear except for a church pew right in the middle of it. David blinked to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. But the wooden bench was there. Where in the world had it come from?

  The pew screeched on the blacktop as David scooted it out of the way. He had it off the road before he thought he should have taken a picture of it for the Banner. That was the kind of picture that moved papers. Not that he was worried about moving papers right now. He had to find Jocie.

  He was almost back to the car when he spotted the wheel. It was crumpled and bent with spokes shooting out in every direction, but there was no doubt it was a bicycle wheel. David picked it up. He wanted it to be old and rusty, but the chrome was shiny and speckled with bright blue paint. The same bright blue Jocie had used to spruce up her bike in the spring.

  He didn’t let himself think. He just looked toward the sky and said, “Dear God.” He stayed still a moment waiting for some kind of sign. A finger pointing the way or a cry for help perhaps. He would have been thankful for just a feeling that he should go this direction or that to look for Jocie. But rain kept hitting his face, and all he saw was a spot of blue pushing back the gray clouds up over his head.

  He didn’t see any other pieces of her bike. She wouldn’t have been on the bike. She would have found shelter. He just needed to find that shelter. He gently lay the mangled bike wheel in the backseat and drove on up the road. Whatever shelter she had found would be along the road. She wouldn’t have tried to go across the fields on her bike. And Wes had gone this way. She could be with him. David’s heart suddenly felt lighter. He pictured her on the back of Wes’s motorcycle way ahead of the storm, perhaps back to town by now. “Let it be so, Lord,” he whispered as he nosed his car around the branches in the road.

  Another curve and he was at the top of the hill where Clay’s Creek Baptist Church had stood for nearly a century, but it was there no longer. The church building was gone. Wiped clean off its foundation. All that the wind had left behind was the pulpit and a couple more pews, one sitting amid the broken branches of what was left of the massive oak tree that had surely been there when the church was built.

  David’s heart sank. Wes hadn’t found her in time to escape the storm. His motorcycle was standing on its handlebars against the fence across from what was left of the church. There was no sign of Wes. Or Jocie. God help them if they’d taken shelter inside the church.

  He was getting out of his car when a head popped up out of the oak leaves.

  “Daddy!”

  He could hardly believe his eyes as Jocie climbed out of the branches and ran toward him. He grabbed and held her so tightly that he knew she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t seem to mind as she held on to him just as tightly. He loosened his hold just a little, and she started talking.

  “Daddy, I can’t believe it’s you. Everything’s so crazy. I was in the church and I smelled lilacs.” She peeked up at him. “Just like your locust blooms. I couldn’t believe it, but then the Lord pushed me right out of the church into the middle of the storm and I didn’t know whether he was helping me or letting me know it was my time. Then Wes came out of nowhere, sort of like you did just now, and knocked me down to the ground, and then everything blew away. I mean really away and I thought I might blow away too, but then I didn’t. But Wes was gone and I couldn’t find him. And then I did, but he’s hurt and I didn’t know what to do. So I asked the Lord for help. And here you are.”

  “Are you okay, Jocie?” He let go of her enough to look at her face. Blood was smeared across her cheek. “You’re bleeding.”

  She swiped at her cheek and looked at her hand. “Not me, or at least I don’t think so. It’s Wes. The tree fell on him, and I can’t get him out.” She pulled away from David and tugged on his hand. “He’s hurt bad.” She stopped and looked back at him. “You won’t let him die, will you, Daddy?”

  “Not if I can help it, Jocie.” He was already praying nonstop as he climbed across the branches, following Jocie. He prayed harder when he saw Wes. The man had a nasty gash on his head, and his eyes were closed. He was so white that David was afraid it might already be too late for prayers for him this side of eternity.

  Jocie scrambled down beside Wes. “Daddy’s here, Wes. You’re going to be all right. The Lord sent us help just the way I told you he would.”

  David pushed through the branches till he was crouched on the other side of Wes. “Can you hear me, Wes?”

  Wes opened one of his eyes and peered at David. “Of course I can hear you. A tree fell on me. I didn’t go deaf.”

  “How bad is it?” David asked. “Can you feel your toes?”

  “If I still have toes, I don’t know it,” Wes said. “But that might be good. I might not be wanting to feel my toes right now. Don’t hurt much at all, to be truthful. My head smarts a mite but not my leg. Course, if you move that tree, I expect it will. And could sprout some real bleeders too.”

  “Well, we can’t leave you under there,” David said before he sent Jocie to the car for some of the string they used to tie up the bundles of papers. “I’ll put a tourniquet on it till we see what’s going to happen. You were right out in the middle of this one, weren’t you? Get any pictures?”

  “Sorry, boss. There wasn’t time. I came up the hill just as them clouds started twisting together and came right at us. And there was Jo right out in the middle of the churchyard just staring at the funnel. We didn’t have time to get inside, which is just as well, I guess. Jo says it took that old church here clean away.”

  “Not much left,” David said.

  “You could get some pictures now. It’d be a doggone shame not to take some for the paper. It ain’t every day that you’re Johnny on the Spot for a tornado. First real news in Holly County for years.”

  “We’re not worrying about pictures for the paper.” David broke a stick off one of the branches beside his head.

  “Might sell enough extra papers to buy me some crutches and fix my motorcycle. And I ain’t budging till you do it.”

  “You can’t budge anyway,” David said.

  Wes grabbed hold of David’s arm. “Let Jo take the pictures while you get me out of here. I don’t want the girl to see it.”

  “She’ll have to see it. She’ll have to help me get you to the car.”

  “Let her take the pictures first. Give her something to think about instead of me yelling.”

  Jocie was back with the string. David
wound it together before he worked it under Wes’s leg. He glanced up at Jocie. “Go take some pictures. My camera’s on the front seat. Finish off the whole roll, but do it quick. We need to move.”

  “I don’t want to take pictures now,” Jocie said.

  “But you have to, Jo,” Wes said. “Me and you lived to tell the story, but ain’t nobody gonna believe we were all here and nobody took a picture. They’ll think we’re making it up for certain. So go on and snap a few, and don’t pay me no mind if I let out a few Jupiter whoops back here.”

  “Take the pictures, Jocie.” David looked Jocie in the eye. “Wes wants you to. But first clear out the backseat of the car and bring me a bunch of those old papers in the trunk. I’ll have to try to fashion some kind of splint out of them. Oh, and move the car up as close as you can.” When she just looked at him, David gave her shoulder a little nudge. “Go on. Do it. I’ll yell if I need more help.”

  Jocie had been driving the car up and down their driveway since she was ten, so she didn’t have any problem pulling up into the churchyard once she’d cleared out a path through the branches and pushed the church pew out of the way. She took her father the papers and more string and then grabbed the camera. It had a fresh roll of film.

  The sun had come out, and the sky was mostly blue. Somehow that made the devastation look that much worse. She took a couple of shots of Wes stuck under the tree, several different angles of what was left of the church, a picture of the pew in the churchyard, a close-up of a hymnbook amid the rubble open to “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” She started to flip the pages to find “Amazing Grace,” since she didn’t want to think about the roll being called up there right now, but then she left it the way it was. Maybe the Lord had made the wind open it to that page for a reason.

  Behind her, Wes let out a yell. Jocie cringed, but she kept shooting and winding. The sooner she got through, the sooner she could go help. And Wes was right. They had to take pictures. She finished up the film with a shot of her father working on Wes, who looked totally lost in one of those Jupiterian circles he’d talked about. His eyes were shut, and he was breathing hard.