by Lisa Wingate
Ernest and me ended up to be the last ones in the church. He was waiting to drag the door back into place after I got out, but I took a minute to pick up the last couple pieces of trash. Sister Mona and her group’d left that place nearly clean as a whistle. Except for the dirt stirred around on the floor and the tarp hung over the broken window, you couldn’t tell anything’d happened there.
“It’s a miracle this place held on through the storm, especially that roof.” I looked up at the dots of sunlight coming through overhead. “I seen tornadoes peel off sheet tin and roll it up like duct tape.”
“This old buildin’, she gonna stand here a long time,” he said. “I’m’ma say, she been built to las’.”
“Reckon so.”
“Mais, be bad they tear it down to widen up the road someday.”
“Surely will.” I walked toward the door thinkin’ that no matter what happened to this buildin’, I’d never forget it. “I almost hate to leave it behind.”
Ernest belly-laughed as I stepped out into the light and he pulled the door closed. “My eye, cher! I’m’ma get me some good food, and a shower, and lay up in a soft bed.”
“That sounds good, too,” I admitted, taking a deep breath and pulling in the smells of moss, and pine straw, and water. “But the low country’s where my mamee’s people come from. I don’t reckon I’ll ever get back there again.”
“Cher, you get me a hot shower, and some food, and a bed, and when the water go down, I drive you back down there myself and give you the gran’ tour.” Ernest smiled real big with a twinkle in his eye.
“I think this trip’s the good Lord’s way of tellin’ me to let it go. There were some stories in Mamee’s family I always wondered about, that’s all.” I was talkin’ to myself as much as Ernest. I stood there looking around while he worked that stiff old door back into place, just like we found it.
Ernest gave me a real tender look. “I got me a empty spot up there, front a’ my truck. You wanna ride wit’ me, I listen pretty good,” he said, then laughed, his big chest shaking up and down. “I need me somethin’ to keep awake.”
“Oh, hon”—I batted a hand at him—“I can keep anybody awake.”
“You got a deal, then, sha.” The words rolled off his tongue in one big string, sounding like You-god-da-deal-den-sha.
“It’s a bargain, pardner,” I said, then hollered up at Imagene to let her know I was gonna ride with Ernest.
The two of us walked around the bus to his truck, and he let me in. Leaning out the window, he wheeled his hand around and hollered at the bus, “Let’s ged-on-da-road!”
Just before we pulled out, his stomach rumbled so loud I heard it, and he thumped his middle hard with his palm. “Gal-ee! I’m hon-gree. Two hundred ninety pound a’ man, he can’t go all day wit’out food.”
“Hon,” I said, “I don’t usually go all day without feedin’ somebody, so we’re a pair. Y’all get us back to Daily and I’ll put on a spread that’ll fatten you up like a market steer.”
Ernest laughed. “Hoo-eee! For true, sha? That a promise or a threat?”
“Little bit a’ both,” I told him, and then the vehicles rolled out all in a train with the post truck leading the way toward home.
Chapter 14
Kai Miller
Traveling was slow, and an anxious feeling hung in the bus, pulling the air taut. Along the roadsides, the water was rising, flowing downriver as storm runoff found watersheds. Abandoned cars littered the ditches, where discarded belongings and trash floated like driftwood. Ahead, the road snaked through the water, a pencil-thin island, a lifeline, currents lapping at its edges, running high and fast under bridges that swayed and vibrated with the current. In tiny communities along the highway, residents were out surveying the damage, nervously putting gas in cars that remained above the flood line, or standing on the porches of homes or businesses, watching the water come up and wondering how high it would rise.
“De’pouille!” Sister Mona whispered, shaking her head at the mess outside.
I tried not to think about what might be happening back in Perdida. The storm reports on the radio were spotty, so it was hard to tell for certain. Everything I owned could be washing off to Timbuktu right now.
They’re just things, I told myself. They don’t matter. But a part of me knew that without those things, I was nobody. I was like my father after one of his potential recording deals collapsed, or his latest cache of lotto tickets didn’t pay off, or he bet on the wrong horse at the races, and he had to take whatever work he could get or go begging to Grandmother Miller.
Come here without two dimes to rub together, she’d say as she opened the door.
Outside the window, a sign came into view, growing larger in the dusky evening light until finally the letters were clear. WACO 60. Waco was just down the road from McGregor. Grandmother Miller’s house was closer than I thought. No wonder I was hearing her in my head.
“Qui c’est que’ca? Look like they got a problem up ahead there,” Sister Mona said, derailing my train of thought, which was probably for the best, since it wasn’t headed anywhere good, anyway.
Stretching in my seat, I tried to see what was happening in front of us. Brake lights shined against the pavement and sprinkled pink fog over the water in the ditches.
The radio on the dashboard squawked, and the driver picked up the mouthpiece to answer. Pastor D. stood over him, listening, his face narrow with concern.
“What’s goin’, Pastor D.?” Mona pushed out of her seat with a grunt and stood teetering above me in a way that convinced me to stuff myself as far as possible into the crack between the seat and the wall. “Pastor D., why we slowin’ down? Sa k’genyen?”
Pastor D. didn’t reply. Clutching the pole behind the driver’s seat, he spoke to the driver.
“D., what’s goin’ on?” Sister Mona demanded.
“The Lawd bless me wit’ twenty-twenty ears, Mona,” Pastor D. called back, raising a palm as in Talk to the hand. “Soon’s I figure out the problem up there, I’m’ma pass that right along yo’ way. Don’ you worry.”
Mona snorted and started up the aisle, grabbing seat backs and swaying with the roll of the bus. “I’m’ma bless you wit’ somethin’, you tellin’ me Talk to the hand …”
The bus hit a chughole, and Sister Mona landed in the lap of a terrified teenager, three rows from the front. Pastor D. seized the opportunity to make an announcement.
“All right, ever’body.” He patted the air like he was silently pushing the congregation back into their seats. “We got trouble wit’ Ernest truck. He gonna pull off and let us go on past. We got about a-hour-little-more before we gonna be at this town, Daily. Ernest, he gonna limp along bes’ he can and meet us later, and bring all the luggage and the animals. He gonna make it fine, jus’ gonna be a little slow. Pa gen pwoblem.”
A murmur went through the bus, and from the back, a woman hollered, “Fiank-o! We don’ leave nobody behind! We go on all together. That’s the way we voted it. Them what the Lawd has brung together, let no man take apart, amen?”
A rumble of agreement traveled through the crowd.
“I’m not goin’ without my cat,” an old woman hollered.
“My eye! I’m not goin’ without my boy!” Sister Mona added. “We come all this way. You call up ahead, Pastor D. You tell Ernest to jus’ keep on, and we gonna follow behind. We all keep together. Family don’ leave family, and this church, it a family. Amen?” Swiveling back and forth, she called up another swell of agreement, then added, “We gonna get there. But we gonna get there together.”
The driver and Pastor D. looked at each other, and finally Pastor D. shrugged helplessly. “I’m’ma say amen, then. I can see when I’m outdone. Settle in and we got us a slow trip ahead.”
Sister Mona came back down the aisle nodding, muttering under her breath, and looking vindicated. “Tell me he gonna leave my boy behind!” she muttered as she sank into the seat beside me. “Nobody, nob
ody gonna leave my boy behind. Seskonsa!”
Letting out a long breath, I settled in for what would, apparently, be a long ride. As the miles crawled slowly by, I closed my eyes and let my mind go murky, leaving behind the bus, and the sounds of the people, and the whispers of Mona, uttering a mother’s prayer for the well-being of her son.
I woke up to Sister Mona screaming, “Praaaaise da Lawd! I’m’ma say amen!” Outside the window, a sign was passing. Through filmy eyes, I could just make out the letters. DAILY 10.
Sister Mona let out a long, loud whoop, and the group responded with a cheer and a fluttering of hands in the air.
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes as we traveled the last few miles of winding road, the headlights illuminating the surrounding terrain in circular bits and pieces. While I was sleeping, the country had become rough and hilly. Rocks, live oaks, and spiny yuccas had replaced thick undergrowth and ditches filled with water. Where tall pines had blocked the horizon, now miles and miles of open country stretched toward the sky. A full moon painted the ground in shades of pearl and iridescent silver, and overhead, a million stars glittered in a velvet blanket of sky.
A sense of peace settled over me as we crested the final hill, passing a Welcome to Daily sign. In the valley below, where a lazy river reflected the moon in a curling ribbon, the little town of Daily, Texas, was putting out enough light to rival the Vegas strip—as if every lamp in every window had been lit and left burning to welcome us. As we crossed the river and chugged up Main Street, residents appeared from houses and storefronts, waving and clapping, like we were soldiers returning from war.
The passengers on the bus pressed close to the windows, peering uncertainly at the crowd. “S’pose they been expectin’ somebody else?” Bluejay muttered, leaning across the aisle toward his mother. “What time it is?”
Mona looked at her watch. “Pass eleven.”
“Gal-ee, what’re they doin’?” one of the teenagers whispered.
“I don’ know …”
“What in the he …”
“You watch that mouth, T. Ray!” Mona said, pointing at a teenage boy. “I’m’ma say they jus’ givin’ us a welcome. That’s what I’m’ma say. This how they welcome folks here.”
“You know that fo’ sure, Aunt Mona?” The teenager remained unconvinced.
Sister Mona squinted into the glow, surveying the commotion on Main Street. “My eye …” she answered. “I ain’t sure of nothin’.”
If the members of Holy Ghost Church weren’t ready for Daily, Texas, the people of Daily were definitely ready for them. The bus had barely squealed to a stop before we were swept up in a swirl of activity and surrounded by people carrying suitcases, people offering blankets, jackets, and clean clothes, people helping to unload luggage, and telling us that a buffet had been set up in the Daily Café and lodging was ready at the Baptist church and in the Daily Hotel.
“Now, don’t you worry, hon,” Donetta said to me as we crossed under a sign that read Daily Hair and Body, Beauty Salon, Auto Paint and Body, Insurance Welcome. On the windows of the building, fading paint still proclaimed Daily Hotel. “I got a place for you at my house.” Slipping an arm around my shoulders, Donetta guided me through the door into the old hotel lobby, which had been converted into a beauty shop sometime around 1960, judging by the equipment. “You just wait here a minute, and then I’ll take you on over to the house. I got a empty bed in my sewin’ room, and you’ll be real comfortable there, and we’ll put your dogs in the backyard, and it’ll be just fine. You must be plumb wore out.” Spotting her nephew passing by with a load of suitcases under each arm, she waved him closer. “Kemp, honey, come on over here a little minute.”
Kemp veered in our direction, threading his way through the crowd without setting down the luggage. I caught myself watching him move through the lobby, seemingly unburdened by the weight of the bags. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t decide why.
He glanced up and caught me watching, and blood prickled into my cheeks. Something about Kemp Eldridge put me a little off balance.
“You busy, hon?” Donetta asked.
He quirked a brow, looking down at one armful of bags, then the other. “It’ll take a few minutes to sort all the luggage and figure out what goes here and what goes to the church and what’s too soaked to go anywhere.”
I thought about my duffle bag and cast around the room for it. In the rush to load the buses and get on the road, I’d lost track of it. Gil’s Bible was in there… .
Donetta batted a hand at her nephew, then pulled a pink suitcase from under his arm and set it on the floor. By the old wooden stairway in the back of the lobby, Ernest and Bluejay, also loaded down with luggage and under the field-marshaling of their mother, gave each other confused looks.
“Oh, don’t worry about thay-ut, hon.” Donetta turned on the sweet-as-molasses southern drawl, like she was trying to sell someone an apple pie. What exactly was going on here? “There’s plenty of folks can take care of thay-ut. Ye-ew wouldn’t mind escortin’ Kai, here, on over to my house and gettin’ her settled in the sewin’ room, ri-ight? Just move them boxes of junk off the bed and carry them on out to the shed, oh-kaaay? I been gonna make rag rugs for the rummage sale—way-ul, I was, anyhow, but I didn’t get it done. Just move it out of there for now so Kai can have the room. Ye-ew think ye-ew can do thay-ut, dar-lin’?”
Kemp hesitated, as confused as I was by the obvious sales job. Donetta clearly had some ulterior motive, and even though I couldn’t imagine what it was, I immediately felt guilty. There was work to do here. I should have been helping, and aside from that, Donetta’s nephew was probably exhausted. His jeans and T-shirt were covered with mud, and his skin was chapped and windblown around a dark growth of razor stubble. His eyelids hung low over his eyes, the lashes touching bottom, then snapping open again. He looked like he was ready to crash somewhere, anywhere, and the sooner the better.
“Oh, listen, he doesn’t have to …” His gaze caught mine, and the words went right out of my head. To … to … to … Up close, he had the most incredible eyes. A warm, rich hazel, not quite brown, not quite green, with thick black lashes. There was a little crinkle at the corners, as if he laughed often. He had tree shavings in his hair and just the littlest bit of sawdust in his eyebrows. His hair, which should have been almost black, was tipped with brown where water or perspiration had formed sawdust-encrusted curls.
It was an oddly appealing look—sort of lumberjack meets Calvin Klein.
“I can sleep …” I heard myself mumble. He smiled, and I lost the thought again. He had nice teeth, even. “Anywhere I …” The rest of the sentence left my head completely. My body, which only moments ago had been spongy with exhaustion, woke up all at once.
“Don’t even bother arguing with her,” he whispered, bending closer, so that the distance felt oddly intimate. “You’ll never win.”
Donetta pushed a puff of air past her lips, giving him the evil eye. “You just hush, Mr. Smartie. Kai’s gotta be plumb wore out, and I can’t leave here right now. I got folks to feed, and we need to decide who’s stayin’ in the hotel rooms upstairs and who’ll bunk on a pallet downstairs, and who’s stayin’ down at the church. You can’t put a whole busload a’ people just anyplace.” Her gaze circled the interior of the old hotel lobby, taking in the beauty shop, the small square of carpet surrounded by exercise equipment behind the old hotel counter, the empty space at the back by the main stairwell. “We might could put some air mattresses in here, it’d be more comfortable …” she muttered, then turned her attention back to Kemp and me.
“Now, there’s plenty to eat at the house. Ye-ew just make yourself to home, hon. Kemp’ll show ye-ew where everythang’s at.” Her southern drawl thickened again, like pudding setting up. “I just called over to the house and nobody answered, so you’ll have it all to yourself, da-arlin’.” A flash of emotion crossed her face, something uncharacteristically dark and sad. “I guess Ronald’s gone d
own the river fishin’, still.” She pulled more luggage from Kemp’s hands, stacking it on the floor. “Somebody else can take these up. Ye-ew just show Kai over to the house and get her settled ri-ight on in, y’hear?”
A familiar sense of uneasiness scratched the back of my neck, like the point of a sandbur, imbedded. Living in the kinds of places I had as a kid, it became a matter of instinct to be careful about people. When someone you barely knew offered you something or was overly nice to you, it was usually a trap. “Really, I’m fine. I can help here. You don’t have to make special arrangements for me.”
Lips pushing to one side, Kemp shook his head, rolling his gaze over to his aunt, as if he were waiting for the return volley in a Ping-Pong match. His eyes caught the light from the old chandeliers overhead and sparkled in a way that told me he was laughing on the inside. A voice in the back of my head said, Kai Miller, what you arguing for? Talk about a welcome wagon!
“No, now, hon, the sooner I can get some bodies out of here, the better. And it’s the least I can do, bein’ as you saved my li-ife. Our li-ives, even. All three of us gals. Now, don’t worry about your little duffle bag, either. I know what it looks li-ike. I’ll watch out for it and put it aside when it turns up.” Donetta continued robbing Kemp of his luggage load. He didn’t argue, just helped her make a pile on the floor. No sooner was the stack complete than Donetta’s hand found the small of my back, and the next thing I knew, I was being herded through the crowd, out the front door, and onto the sidewalk, where Kemp quickly concluded that his truck had ended up trapped between the bus and Ernest’s delivery van.
Donetta suggested we walk, since her house was only a few blocks away, and it was “such a ni-ice ni-ight.” Tipping her head to one side, she stood on the sidewalk, watching the two of us like a painter studying a developing piece of work. “All the stars out and a big ol’ moon. After so much time cooped up on the bus, a walk’ll be just the tha-ang. Stretch yer legs.” Her lips, still faintly red, with faded lipstick fanning into the creases, spread into a wide, self-satisfied smile. “Don’t worry about a tha-ang, now. We got lots of help here.” She grabbed me into a hug, rocked me back and forth, then cupped the sides of my face. “You know, a hurricane in the middle of our vacation ain’t what I planned on, but my grandma used to say, ‘Sometimes plans gone bad bring somethin’ good.’ ”