Small Town Rumors

by Carolyn Brown

  She finished off the last of the pecan sandies that Lettie had sent home with her night before last and a second cup of coffee before she got dressed and headed to Nadine’s to clean that day. She smelled the bacon half a block away. She crossed her fingers, hoping Nadine had made enough breakfast for an extra person.

  She was not disappointed.

  Nadine met her at the door and ushered her inside. “I’ve got bacon and waffles. Got to use up those fresh strawberries that Rick brought me last Friday, so I sliced and sugared them and whipped up some real cream. I haven’t eaten yet, either. It’s no fun eating alone.”

  “Thank you. That sounds delicious. What can I do to help?”

  “Not one thing, darlin’ girl. Just pull up a bar stool, and we’ll eat right here. Waffles won’t take long to cook. I’ve already got the iron heated up.”

  Jennie Sue nodded. “So what’s on your agenda today?”

  Nadine poured batter into the waffle iron that she’d placed in the middle of the bar. “I’m going to do a little yard work this mornin’ while it’s cool, and then I’m plannin’ to fry apple fritters so I can send some out to the farm when Rick picks you up this evenin’. Cricket is real partial to them. And I got to tell you, she said that you’re a real good cook. She loves to bake cookies and cakes and such, but she don’t have a lot of imagination when it comes to real cookin’. Y’all ought to go into the cleanin’ and caterin’ business together.” Nadine rattled on while the first batch of waffles cooked.

  Yeah, right. I’d rather go into business with the devil himself, Jennie Sue thought as she listened with half an ear. But that idea didn’t sound too bad. After seven years of marriage to Percy, she definitely knew how to clean a house and plan a party. If she started up a business of her own, she could live right there in Bloom in Lettie’s apartment. She could do events on the weekends, especially in the winter after the farmers’ market closed down. She’d have to give up her goal of finding a job in her field for this crazy idea. Or maybe not? She wasn’t even thirty yet—she could give the new venture a couple of years and then use her education to run her own business. It would take some serious thought, but maybe it was worth looking into.

  “I’d have to have equipment,” she mused aloud.

  “Oh, honey, between me and Lettie, we’ve accumulated enough silver and crystal that you wouldn’t have to buy a thing. We come from a long line of hoarders when it comes to pretty things.” Nadine opened the waffle maker and put the first one on Jennie Sue’s plate. “Pile on the strawberries and whipped cream and add some bacon on the side for a little protein. Juice and coffee are on the end of the table.”

  “Why would you loan me your precious things?” Jennie Sue asked.

  “Honey, it’s just stuff,” Nadine answered.

  Ideas bounced around in Jennie Sue’s head. In five years she could be using her business degree to run two businesses—a housecleaning one that might employ four or five ladies, and a catering one that could give part-time work to dozens.

  But why would I want to stay in Bloom? she asked herself as she finished her waffle.

  Because that’s where Emily Grace is buried, and your new friends are here, and they care enough about you to offer to let you use their pretty things to start a business and even make you waffles with sugared strawberries without even noticing your weight, the voice in her head said.

  “I can see the gears workin’ in your head.” Nadine refilled her coffee cup. “Well, you just let them keep turnin’ while you clean today.”

  “It’s hard to think that I’ve only been back in Bloom a bit and I’m even entertaining the idea of stayin’. I really wanted to walk into a company and start working my way up the ladder,” Jennie Sue said.

  Nadine patted her on the arm. “You just think about it, honey. If you decide to go the CEO route, then you could commute to Sweetwater. It ain’t but a fifteen-minute drive, and you could still live in Lettie’s apartment.”

  “Thank you, Nadine,” she said, “but one thing is for absolute sure—Cricket Lawson wouldn’t be interested in helping me with a business in town, and I’m not sure I’d want her to. It would be like workin’ with my mother.”

  “Lot alike, ain’t they?”

  “In different ways, but yes.”

  “And you like Cricket enough to be an almost friend with her and not your mother?” Nadine asked.

  “At least Cricket doesn’t tell me I’m fat,” Jennie Sue answered.

  “Charlotte is wrong to do that, but she is your mama. You can have lots of friends, but you only get one mama. So call her and make things right,” Nadine said.

  “I will. I promise,” Jennie Sue vowed for the second time that morning.

  She’d worked her way from the bedrooms and the bathroom and had dusted the pictures lining the walls in the hallway. Most of them were of people that she didn’t know, but there were a few of three little girls, then three teenagers and three older women that she figured were Flora, Nadine, and Lettie at various stages of their lives. Someday Jennie Sue was going to have a hallway with pictures of her family all lined up pretty in it to make her smile when she dusted them each week. She’d never have a picture of Emily Grace to hang on the wall with the rest of her kids’, if she was ever blessed enough to have them, but she’d tell her children about their older sister, for sure.

  Leaving the pictures behind, she parked the vacuum in the middle of the living room floor and headed outside to see if the slight wind had dried the sheets hanging on the line. Stepping out in the heat from the cool house almost took her breath, but that was Texas in the summertime. It was unusual that there was even a slight breeze. Mabel said that the wind blows constantly in Texas until the first day of July, and then it’s impossible to buy, beg, or borrow enough to flutter the leaves until September.

  The sheets still felt damp on the edges, so she crossed the yard to go back inside and dust the living room when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. Before she could jerk her head around to see what was happening, she heard a thud and a moan. She took a step backward and peeked around the edge of the house to see Nadine lying on her back under the huge pear tree.

  “Sweet Lord.” Jennie Sue dropped to her knees beside her and touched the artery in her neck to see if she was alive. Her pulse was beating, but not nearly as fast as Jennie Sue’s.

  Nadine took a huge gulp of air, and her eyes opened wide. “Help me up. Gravity just got more than my boobs and butt. Either that or them damned aliens swooped down and pushed me off that limb.”

  “You lie perfectly still. Don’t even move your fingers,” Jennie Sue demanded as she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed 911. “You could have a fractured back or neck. If you move, it could paralyze or kill you.”

  “I’m fine,” Nadine argued. “I’m not going to die fallin’ out of the pear tree. Me and God got a deal. I get to live to be a hundred years old, because that’s how long it’ll take for Him to forgive me of all my sins. Dammit! My shoulder hurts.”

  “Don’t move.” She kept her eyes on Nadine as she talked to the lady on the other end of the line and explained what had happened.

  “I’m not payin’ for an ambulance. You and Lettie can take me to the doctor here in town,” Nadine fussed.

  “If you don’t be still, I’ll tell the aliens to come back and get you,” Jennie Sue threatened.

  Jennie Sue finished talking on the phone, quickly called Lettie, and then sat down on the grass beside Nadine. “If you don’t have the money for an ambulance, then use my cleaning money until you save up enough to pay for it. You’ll need a backboard and a neck brace.”

  “It’s not the money. It’s the principle. They come less than ten miles and charge out the ass for what? A ride in the back of a crowded van. Hell, I got a van, and I’ll even lie in the back seat if you’ll let me sit up. Besides, I’ve got on my oldest panties. I can’t go to the hospital with ratty underbritches. What will people say?” Nadine said.


  “I won’t tell a single soul about your panties, and you know those doctors can’t, either.” Jennie Sue crossed her heart with her forefinger and then pulled her phone out of her hip pocket to check the time. It startled her so badly when it rang that she dropped it like a hot potato. She hurried to pick it up to answer.

  Lettie’s voice cracked. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”

  “She’s talkin’ and breathin’ and there’s no blood, but I’m not letting her move. She’s fightin’ with me about an ambulance,” she answered.

  “I’m on my way over there. Turnin’ onto Main Street, I heard the sirens blowin’. We’ll follow them to the hospital. I’ve told her a million times not to climb up in that pear tree to trim it. I swear to God, if she’s broken a hip, I’m going to make her go to a nursing home,” Lettie yelled into the phone.

  The phone went dark and Jennie Sue heard the squeal of tires on the driveway and the sirens coming down the street at the same time. Lettie came around the side of the house, her chubby little legs churning as fast as they would go. She had her right hand over her heart and the forefinger on her left hand wagging before she even plopped down on the grass beside her sister.

  Nadine cut her eyes around at Lettie. “Don’t start on me. I’m already mad because y’all are makin’ me go in the ambulance. You was yellin’ so loud on Jennie Sue’s phone that I heard what you said. I’m not goin’ to no damned nursing home. If my hip was broke, I’d know it. Only thing that hurts is my shoulder. I know how to tuck and roll when I fall. I’m not like you and Cricket. Y’all just sprawl out when you go down.”

  “What have we got?” Two paramedics jogged around the house with a body board and a neck brace.

  “Ninety years old and fell out of a pear tree,” Lettie said. “She hates doctors and hospitals, so make her stay for a week to teach her a lesson. And give her shots every day even if she don’t need them.”

  “Don’t be a bitch.” Nadine shot daggers toward her sister.

  “We’ll give her a good checkin’ out. You want to follow us?”

  “Of course I do,” Lettie said. “She’ll lie out her teeth so you’ll let her come home, otherwise.”

  “Jennie Sue, make her stay here, and when I’m ready to come home in an hour or so, you can come get me.” Nadine winced when they put her on the board. “She’ll drive the doctors and nurses crazy with all her questions and carryin’ on.”

  “This time Lettie wins,” Jennie Sue said.

  “Okay, ladies, we’ll see you there.” The paramedics each took an end of the board and carried Nadine to the driveway.

  “We’ll take her van so if they do let her come home, we can bring her,” Lettie told Jennie Sue. “She keeps an extra set of keys in the front passenger fender well.”

  “Dammit!” Nadine huffed. “I was hopin’ you’d forget.”

  “I’ve got the memory of an elephant.”

  “And the butt of one,” Nadine said as they lifted her into the ambulance.

  “At least I’m not crazy enough to climb up in a pear tree like a monkey,” Lettie said, and then laid a hand on one paramedic’s shoulder. “You take good care of her and don’t hit any bumps, you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded with gravity.

  Jennie Sue found the key in a little magnetic container with no problem but had to rush back inside the house for her purse. When she returned, Lettie was sitting in the passenger seat. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she kept pulling tissues from the interior of her big black purse. Jennie Sue took the time to lean across the console and hug her tightly. “It’s going to be all right. She might have a busted shoulder. Know what she told me? That the aliens pushed her out of the tree.”

  “If them sorry bastards ever do find a way to Earth, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later. I thought for sure she’d be dead,” Lettie whimpered. “Next week I’m hiring someone to cut every tree on her place down to the ground.”

  Jennie Sue started up the engine and backed the van out, drove a couple of blocks to Main Street, and then headed south to Sweetwater. “How did you find out so fast? It hadn’t been three minutes since I called 911.”

  “Someone must’ve heard it on the scanner and called Amos and he called me. I dropped what I was doin’ and pushed the gas pedal to the floor on my old truck. She’s so skinny, and she’s been clumsy her whole life. If they’ll keep her, I can have these trees gone by the time she gets home,” Lettie declared.

  “Folks are going to say that I’m bad luck. They may tar and feather me and run me out of town,” Jennie Sue said.

  “Why?” Lettie stopped sniffling and whipped her head around to stare at Jennie Sue. “Did she land on you when she fell? Are you hurt?”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t have let her climb up in that tree if I’d known what she was up to. She said she was doing yard work, so I figured she was pullin’ weeds out of her flower bed. But think about it, Lettie. First Cricket sprains her ankle, and then Nadine has a bad fall. Am I bad luck?”

  Lettie shook her head hard enough that all her chins wiggled. “Stop that kind of nonsense talk. You weren’t anywhere near either of them when they fell. Cricket slipped on a wet sidewalk. Besides, she was wearin’ them spike heels, and they don’t make her look a bit skinnier. Them things is just askin’ for trouble. And you sure didn’t tell Nadine to climb a tree.” She pointed toward the sign that said to turn for the emergency room. “You park right there. If they got a problem with it, I’ll straighten them out. And I’ll hear no more about you bein’ bad luck.”

  “I hate seeing my friends get hurt.” She parked near the emergency doors.

  “Everyone does, but that burden ain’t yours to carry, child.” Lettie undid her seat belt and was out of the vehicle so fast that Jennie Sue had to rush to catch up to her.

  Lettie didn’t even slow down at the admissions desk, but told the lady to open the doors or she’d kick them in. The doors were already swinging open when Lettie and Jennie Sue reached them.

  “Nadine, where are you?” She raised her voice as soon as they entered.

  “Lettie, I’m in here,” Nadine called out from the first room on the left. “They’re takin’ me to X-ray, and I’m not goin’ without you.”

  Jennie Sue followed her as she breezed into the room like a class 5 tornado. No one even bothered to ask if she was related to these two like they had with Cricket.

  Lettie went straight to the bedside where Nadine was still on the body board and nodded at the lady waiting to push the bed down the hallway. “You can go now. I’m here and I’m going with her.”

  “You’ll have to sit outside the room,” she said.

  “Leave it cracked so I can hear her,” Lettie informed the woman.

  “They can’t, sister,” Nadine said. “But I’ll yell loud enough they’ll hear me all the way in Bloom if they hurt me. I don’t trust those machines.”

  “Aliens,” Lettie whispered to Jennie Sue. “I swear to God and all the angels that they are workin’ their way to Earth through all this damned technology crap.”

  “Don’t be givin’ away our information. That’s classified,” Nadine whispered.

  The lady rolled her eyes and pushed Nadine out of the room. Jennie Sue sank down in an uncomfortable chair and tried to remember if she’d locked the door on her way out of the house. And if she had, did either of the sisters have a key to get back in? While she was pondering on that and sending up prayers that Nadine hadn’t broken her neck or her back, her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the caller ID, but she answered it anyway.

  “What’s happened to Nadine? Did she die? Please tell me she didn’t die. I’m not sure Lettie would live a month without Nadine,” Cricket said at Jennie Sue’s greeting.

  “She’s in X-ray, but they don’t think anything is broken right now,” Jennie Sue said. “She fell out of that big pear tree in her backyard.”

  “Holy cow. I’ll call back later for more news. I’ve
got to make half a dozen calls right now so folks will know that she’s not dead. The ladies at the church are already tryin’ to decide whether to start thinkin’ about a funeral lunch for the family and friends. And Elaine said that the flower shop has had a dozen calls wantin’ to know if she’ll be at the local funeral home or the one in Sweetwater,” Cricket said. “You’ve got my number, so if you hear anything, call me and I’ll pass it on.”

  “Small towns!” Jennie Sue groaned.

  She’d begun to think that the hospital had swallowed both of her new friends and had started to pace around the small emergency room when she heard Nadine and Lettie arguing loudly.

  “You cut down one of my trees, and I’ll set fire to your house and blame it on them damned little bald-headed fellows from outer space.” Nadine’s tone was high and squeaky.

  “You have to promise me with one hand on Mama’s Bible and the other raised to God that you will never climb up in one of those trees again or I’ll do it,” Lettie said. “You’re lucky this time, but next time you might kill your fool self. If the trees need trimmin’ or pears need pickin’, you can hire the work done. You’re not poor, for God’s sake.”

  “Waste not, want not!” Nadine continued to argue.

  “I’ll pay for it if you are that tight,” Lettie said.

  The lady bringing Nadine back rolled her eyes and escaped as the doctor entered the room. He stuck the big negatives up on a screen and shook his head. “By all reasons, you should have broken every bone in your body, Miz Clifford. What on earth were you doin’ in a tree?”

  “Trimmin’ it, and I don’t want to hear a lecture. Lettie’s already bitched at me enough. Just get me out of this thing and let me go home,” Nadine told him.

  “I should do an MRI for precautionary reasons. You might have scrambled your brain,” he said.

  “No!” Nadine squealed. “I’m not gettin’ in no tube.”

  “You’ll have to sign a form saying that you refused the test,” he said.

  Nadine held out a hand. “Give me a pen. It knocked the wind out of me and that’s all. I was on the lowest limb on my way down when my foot slipped, and I tucked and rolled. My brain is fine.”