Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  I opened my eyes and it wasn’t an angel at all. It was just the taillights from a van. It was backing down the shoulder toward us, and when it got closer, I saw that the rear door said Gifts From the Sea, and there was a big old dog looking at me through the window. He was wagging his tail to beat the band, and if I’d had a tail, I’da been waggin’ right back. I never been so glad to see someone in my life.

  I rolled down the window and stuck out my head. “Hey there,” I called. “We’re outta gas. We need some help!”

  The girl probably couldn’t hear me for the noise of the cars on the road, so she got out and run around to the passenger side of our car, away from the traffic. She tapped on the window, and Imagene woke up with a snort.

  I fumbled around to turn on the car so I could get the window open and talk to the girl. “We’re outta gas,” I hollered, but the sound just bounced around inside the car.

  “Who’s outta gas?” Imagene hunted around the dash for her glasses.

  “We are, Imagene. We’re outta gas and we’re stuck on the side of the road.”

  It figured that right about then, Lucy’d wake up, too. “Who got gas?”

  “We are, Lucy. We’re outta gas and we’re stuck on the side of the road. Y’all hush up now, I’m tryin’ to talk to the girl.”

  Imagene tried to get her glasses unfolded. “What girl?”

  “That girl?” I pointed to the window.

  “What time is it?” Imagene squinted toward the clock.

  “Tirty pass eleven,” Lucy answered.

  “Eleven thirty!” Imagene sucked in a breath. “The storm was supposed to make landfall at eleven.”

  “It’s hit, Imagene. Glorietta’s on land.”

  The girl knocked on the window again, and Imagene jerked away like the hand was a big old snappin’ turtle.

  “We’re outta gas,” I hollered, then finally turned the key and got the window down.

  “You need help?” the girl asked. A car honked on the road, and she looked around, nervous.

  “Hon, I reckon we do. The car died, and there ain’t any way the three of us can walk out of here.” Of all things, tears welled up in my eyes.

  The little gal checked up and down the road again, once, twice, three times, like she was in as big a quandary as we were. Finally, she pushed loose strings of blond hair out of her face—she had real pretty hair, good highlights, too—and said, “You can come with me. You can’t stay here.”

  Imagene, Lucy, and me looked at each other, and in about two and a half seconds, we were grabbing our purses and abandoning ship. The Gifts From the Sea girl—her name was Kai Miller, I found out pretty quick—opened the side door of her van and pushed some things back to make space, then put leashes on the dogs and moved them out of our way. “Hurry.” She darted a nervous look at the cars passing by.

  She didn’t have to say any more for me to understand. There was no tellin’ who was in those cars, or how desperate they might be. We went to work getting the things we needed, includin’ the food, water, and the rest of the pecan pie.

  While we loaded up her van, Kai took her dogs down the shoulder to the grass. One of the dogs barked, and I heard something slide into the ditch water. A shiver crawled up my spine. Mamee always kept a dog at her house to chase off gators. Every once in a while, a dog disappeared and we never saw it again.

  “Be careful down there, hon,” I hollered.

  Imagene, Lucy, and me finished getting our things, locked up the minivan, and stood there waiting for Kai to come back. Up above the clouds, a jet flew over, the sound filling up the night for a minute. After the noise died away, I heard an engine revving someplace behind us. When I stepped out where I could see, there was a jacked-up pickup turning into the ditch about a quarter mile up the road. It slid on the grass, fishtailed, then splashed back and forth through the water, spitting clumps of mud into the taillights’ glow.

  Shading her eyes with her hand, Imagene stepped out and looked down the roadside. “What ’n the world’s happenin’ there?”

  “Nothin’ good, I’ll bet.” I thought of them three fellas that’d been throwing beer bottles at the little church earlier in the day. “Kai, hon, we better go,” I hollered off into the dark. “We better go now.” The fellas in the truck were close enough that I could hear them whoopin’ it up now.

  “Hey, Dodd!” one of them yelled, and a spotlight bobbed back and forth across the ditch, while the truck spun ’round again. “Wait, wait, wait! Gator, gator, gator!” The truck roared through the water, aiming at the gator, I guessed.

  “Oh, dog, I think you got that sucker!”

  The truck revved up again, twirling in the mud so that the headlights strafed the ditch and landed right on Imagene’s minivan.

  “Hey, we got comp’ny!”

  Imagene backed toward the van, and Lucy caught a gasp. I heard Kai running up the hill and the dogs barking, and then headlights swiveled toward her.

  “Woo-eee, look’a there!” one of those men hollered, drunk as a skunk. “Hey, sweetheart, where you been?” The truck fishtailed in the mud, then headed straight for Kai and the dogs. Just before they got to her, the driver cut sideways and the rig slid around to a stop, bringing her up short.

  “Hey, darlin’,” one of them called out.

  “Donetta, what’re we gonna do?” Imagene whispered.

  “Somethin’.” But I didn’t have any idea what. “Them fellas are drunker than Cooter Brown and twice as ugly.”

  “Is a knife in the pie,” Lucy said, and for a minute I thought she’d flipped her wig, but what she meant was there was a paring knife in the container with the pie.

  “They got guns in their back window, Lucy. I saw them whoopin’ it up earlier on.” My voice shook like a flag on a windy hill. “I don’t think a kitchen knife’s gonna do us much good.”

  “We gotta do somethin’,” Imagene whispered. “Them boys are trouble.”

  At the edge of the headlights, Kai’s dogs were pitching a fit, barking and pulling at their leashes. One of them yay-hoos got out and slinked around the truck, real careful-like. He peeked over the end toward where Kai was, and the bigger dog went crazy as a market bull, pulled out of Kai’s hand, and chased that fella up into the bed of the truck. Good dog.

  The man cussed a blue streak, then leaned over toward the window. “Wooh-eee! I think that dog’s got rabies. Hey, Jigger, where’z’at pipe wrench? I’ll teach that s.s.s.sucker to make a runnn at me.”

  Jigger tossed a can out the window. “Come on, Dodd. Let ’um be. It ain’t funny no more.”

  The fella in back searched around the bed, stumbling over empty bottles and pieces of metal, until he finally he came up with something and threw it at the dog. It hit the side of the truck and bounced back, and the boys in the cab hooted.

  “Stop it!” Kai tried to go after the loose dog, but the other one was pulling the opposite way.

  The next thing I knew, I was headed down that hill with my heart rapping in my chest like the tax man at the door. “All right, that’s enough! You boys leave this gal be and move on now. You hear me? Just git on outta here and go sleep off all that liquor before y’all do somethin’ stupid.”

  “Hey, Grandma!” one of them called out.

  The fella in the bed of the truck was so surprised he turned real quick and fell over.

  I shook a finger at them and kept a’comin’. “I’ll tell you what, if I was your grandma, I’d grab you up and whoop you from now till next Tuesdey. All three of y’all. Actin’ like a bunch of sauced-up yay-hoos. Y’all git on out of here!”

  From somewhere behind me, I heard what sounded like a gun cocking, and Lucy hollered, “Hord it righ’ there! Stop or I shoot!” She musta got that from a movie somewhere.

  I looked over my shoulder, and I could just make out that she was pointing something at us. In the dark, I couldn’t tell what it was, so I played along. “For heaven’s sake, Lucy! Put that pistol away before you hurt somebody. You don’
t want to shoot these boys. They look too young to die.”

  “Go ahea’, make my days.” Lucy sounded serious. I didn’t know she had all that actin’ talent.

  The fella in the truck bed staggered to his feet, then leaned over with his mouth hanging open, trying to tell if Lucy really had a gun. He probably couldn’t see that far, and his friends in the truck were gettin’ antsy.

  “You gotta excuse Lucy.” I moved around toward Kai. “She was in the war. She ain’t quite right in the head. She’s okay if she takes her medication, but we ain’t got any along. I don’t think she’d shoot, but I can’t be held responsible, either.”

  The boy in the back squinted at me. He was so drunk, he was probably seeing three or four mad grannies. “She don-don’t have a gun.”

  “She means it, Dodd.” The driver ground the gears like the butcher makin’ sausage. “Let’s go.”

  I got to Kai and reached for the leash. “Here, darlin’,” I whispered while them boys tried to decide what to do. “Give me this dog, and you go get the other one. Real quick, now. Get the leash and take him on to the van.” Kai did what I told her, and once the dog was out of the way, that boy started to climb out the back of the truck. I headed toward the van, too, dragging the big silly dog behind me.

  I caught up with Kai on the hill. “Hurry up. They’re pretty drunk. We’d best go on.”

  Back behind us, the two fellas in the truck were having fun teasing the third one, hollerin’, “Granny’s got her gun. Granny’s got her gun.”

  We didn’t wait around to hear anything else. We got in that old van quicker than you’d think three old ladies, two dogs, and a girl could, and then hit all the locks.

  The engine roared like a freight train, and we took off so fast all our heads snapped. Kai didn’t wait for a gap in traffic, just laid on the horn and swerved into the right lane in front of a motor home. The driver honked, but it didn’t matter, because we were on our way.

  Whatever Lucy had in her hand, she dropped on the floor.

  “That ain’t a gun, is it?” I twisted so I could see her.

  “Is a fire starter.” Lucy sounded cool as a cucumber, but the one dog was curled up beside her and she was petting it so hard its eyes were bugging out. In the other seat, Imagene fanned herself, trying to catch her breath.

  “Lands,” I whispered, all of a sudden feeling like my whole body was full of oatmeal. In the side-view mirror, I watched the pickup turn around in the ditch, then move into line ten or twelve cars back. Kai saw it, too. She glanced over at me, but neither of us said anything about it. “How much gas you got, darlin’?”

  “Not enough,” she answered.

  “It’ll be all right.” Leaning close to the window, I let my fingers drift in the breeze and started praying from the foxhole again. Ahead of us were cars, and behind us were cars. A gust of wind caught the Microbus when we rolled into a clear space where big metal electric towers stretched up like giants, holding heavy strands of cable that swayed like a rope swing.

  “You from down on the coast?” I asked, because I couldn’t concentrate to pray or do anything else but talk. When you’re a hairdresser and you’re nervous, you talk. Actually, when you’re hairdresser and you’re not nervous, you talk. Hairdressers just talk, period.

  “Perdida,” she said.

  “That’s where we were headed, before we run into you at that gas station. Thanks for turning us around when you did, by the way. It’s a good thing we didn’t go all the way to the coast. We’da been that much worse off.” I shifted away from the window so I could hear her better. Outside, the night was getting noisy, the wind shaking the trees around now. “You got family down there in Perdida?”

  She didn’t answer right off, and I felt the curious cat perk its ears. I got a sense about people sometimes. “Friends,” she said. “And an apartment. I live there part time and work cruise ship contracts part time. I was supposed to leave on the Liberation today, but I was too late.”

  “The Liberation!” Of all the odd coincidences. “That’s where we were headed. The three of us gals were goin’ on a cruise. First time ever. Then the storm come in, of course.” All of a sudden, it hit me that it wasn’t any accident we’d ended up broke down when we did, and this little girl picked us up. It wasn’t what we’d planned on, but the Lord was at work here in some way I hadn’t figured out yet. Even through this storm, He was guiding our path toward somethin’. I didn’t know what it was yet, but somethin’. We gals set off for that cruise to have us an adventure, and we were sure having one. When we finally got back to Daily, Texas—however that turned out to be—we’d have a story even Betty Prine couldn’t top.

  Chapter 8

  Kai Miller

  After a couple hours in the car with Donetta, I felt like I knew everyone in her hometown. I’d taken the virtual tour of her hotel building on Main Street, where she ran a beauty shop in the old hotel lobby and her brother, Frank, did auto repair in his garage around back. She told me about the turn-of-the-century hotel rooms upstairs, which had been closed down for a few years but were now experiencing a rebirth due to the town’s recent media status as the home of Amber Anderson, the runner-up singing sensation on last year’s TV season of American Megastar.

  “We got tourism now.” Donetta’s hands moved along with the words, seeming to stretch the syllables like chewing gum. “With Amber bein’ a singin’ star, that’s brought all sorts of folks, even famous folks to town. We got Justin Shay, the Justin Shay, plannin’ to film a movie ri-ight outside town. Him and Amber bought the old Barlinger ranch—that poor old place’d been sittin’ empty fifty years on account of them Barlinger kids were rotten and old Mr. Barlinger changed his will like a flea changes dogs. Nobody could figure out who that ranch belonged to for the longest ti-ime—but anyhow, now Justin and Amber bought the place, and they’re fixin’ it all up for the movie filmin’, and then they’re gonna make a home for foster kids out there. Ain’t that just wonderful?”

  “Yes, it is.” It was hard to share Donetta’s sense of excitement, considering that it was the middle of the night and there was a hurricane on our tails. In the back seat, the other ladies had already given up and fallen asleep.

  “I’m talkin’ your ear off, huh?” Donetta surmised finally.

  “No, it’s fine, really.” On ship, I often met people who wanted to tell me where they were from and why they’d taken a cruise, but I’d never met anyone like the hairdresser from Daily, Texas. When Donetta Bradford told a story, it played in your mind in Technicolor, a little brighter than real life, like a movie from the fifties.

  After apologizing for talking so much, she started talking again. She gave me the rundown of their trip to the coast that morning, their cruise plans, Steel Magnolias, her new laptop computer, and the cell phone that hadn’t worked properly. I let her use mine to try to call home. She got to someone’s voice mail and left a message that would probably panic whoever picked it up. The phone cut out as she was reading road signs out loud, trying to offer details of our location. When she tried to dial again, there was no reception. She gave up after a couple more tries, put the phone away, and started telling me about her bunko club back in Daily. “We all rode in the Founder’s Day parade wearin’ tiaras and prom dresses and singin’ ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo Dah.’ ” She paused to poke a fingernail through her lopsided nest of hair, scratching her head. “Don’t know what made that come to mind just now. My grandpa used to say I could speak ten words a second, with gusts up to fifty. Your ears are probably ringin’, huh?”

  “It’s all right.” The chatter was a good distraction, but even Donetta ran out of things to talk about after a while. Finally, she apologized again for talking so much, then relaxed in the seat and fell asleep.

  Without Donetta and her Daily, Texas, stories, I had no choice but to go back to thinking about the gas gauge slowly sinking toward empty, and noticing that abandoned cars were everywhere. It would only be a matter of time before my bus became one of t
hem, and the storm was moving in fast. The National Guard tanker trucks, which were supposed to be handing out gas along the evacuation routes, hadn’t made an appearance here. It was as if someone had guided thousands of people onto this back road and then forgotten we existed.

  Donetta woke again as I was trying pick up a radio station to check on the storm. The gale-force winds buffeting the van and the nasty bands of clouds in the rearview told me that Glorietta was traveling much faster than we were.

  Jerking upright, Donetta stretched and rubbed her eyes. “Hon, you want me to drive? You gotta be exhausted.”

  “No. I’m all right.”

  “How’s the gas?”

  “Getting low.”

  “Any idea where we’re at?”

  “None.”

  “I see a sign while’go,” Lucy offered drowsily. I hadn’t even realized she was awake back there. “We near Oddly.”

  Donetta laughed. “Well, that’s the truth, but that don’t help much. I hadn’t ever heard of Oddly.”

  “Me either.” Leaning close to the window, I combed my hair away from my face and held it in a ponytail, letting the wind cool my neck and travel down the back of my T-shirt, drying the dampness there.

  Lightning split the sky behind us, and I turned to look over my shoulder.

  “It’s comin’,” Donetta observed grimly. “I guess the radio won’t work?”

  “It’s not picking up any stations.” Something warm slipped under my hand, and I looked down to find that Hawkeye had crawled into the space between the seats.

  “Hey, big fella.” Donetta scratched his ears, and Radar scooted from the back floorboard, stuffing himself into the space beside Hawkeye. “Poor things. Animals got a sense for when a storm’s comin’. My mamee used to say that. She lived on the bayou, down near Perdida. Rice farmers. Went through their share of hurricanes. You ever been in a hurricane?”

  “Not so far,” I admitted. “The ships circumvent big storms, so I never really had to think about it until I got the apartment in Perdida and quit working so much. I’m still getting used to land life—hurricanes included. I didn’t do a very good job of judging this one, that’s for sure.”