by Lisa Wingate
Kemp chuckled. “You’ve got a whole busload of people to feed, Aunt Netta. What could be better than that?” He grinned and winked, and his aunt swatted at him.
“Kempner Rollins! You hush up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kemp’s voice was smooth and southern, laced with a playful hint of sarcasm that was … well … cute.
“And don’t be tellin’ Kai no tales, either.” Donetta gave him a stern look before turning back to me.
“I wouldn’t think of it, Aunt Netta.” In one quick movement, Kemp maneuvered around the bedraggled, yet still remarkably large, nest of hair and kissed his aunt on the cheek.
The corners of her mouth fluttered upward, and she shook her head with a look of reluctant adoration. “You hush, you rascal.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered again.
“Go on, now. Git.” She shooed us off, and we proceeded to Ernest’s truck to rescue my dogs, then started down Main Street with Radar and Hawkeye leading the way past the darkened windows of the Chamber of Commerce, Barlinger’s Hardware, and an empty building where the window advertised Television, Radio, and Small Engine Repair in fading red paint.
“Not too many television repairmen around anymore,” I commented, searching for something to say.
Kemp considered the window. “Nah, these days people just throw things away and buy new.” The observation seemed to bother him, and he gazed into the store, his eyes sliding over the letters on the glass. “Mr. Mahnken had that store when I was a kid. He could fix just about anything, and what he couldn’t fix, he parted out. Watched a little black-and-white TV behind the counter while he worked. Had an incredible memory. He could give you the play-by-play of every World Series for thirty years. He had bins of tubes and transistors from floor to ceiling, and he knew what was in each one. When his kids sold out the store after he died, there were parts for things that hadn’t been used since World War II. The transistors ended up in the trash, but the antique dealers went wild over the hardware bins. Turned out they were worth more than all the stuff he’d worked so hard to save.”
“That’s kind of sad.” Absently, I considered the life’s work of a person and what it could amount to. Would somebody one day sort through all the rescued treasures in my jewelry bin and decide it was only junk?
Kemp shrugged. “Small town. Things change.”
When we reached the end of the block, I glanced over my shoulder. Donetta, Imagene, and Lucy were standing on the sidewalk, watching us. As we turned the corner, I couldn’t help feeling that they were still there, observing through the thick limestone walls of downtown Daily, or peering down via the eyes of the stone gargoyles atop the old bank building.
“Don’t bother trying to figure them out.” Kemp gave a sideways nod in the general direction of the hotel building, and I had the strangest sense of having my thoughts read. “It’s like staring into the sun too long. It’ll drive you insane.”
“Your aunt is very sweet.”
“Don’t let her fool you.” His eyes narrowed at the corners, and I could tell he was kidding. Mostly. “She’s a force of nature.”
“I had that feeling.”
Past the bank building, the side street grew dark. I couldn’t see Kemp’s face, but I sensed that he was thinking about something. His chin was tipped upward, as if he were contemplating the slice of stars twinkling between the buildings. Beyond the rooftops, they spilled toward the horizon like bits of glass randomly tossed into a dark pool of water. In spite of all the ruin Glorietta had left behind just a few hours away, in Daily, Texas, it was a beautiful night. Even the dogs seemed relaxed and comfortable here. After days of being on edge, they now moved amiably, wagging their tails, sniffing the ground, and nipping playfully at each other.
Kemp and I walked for a while without talking. Around us, the air was soothing, filled with the scents of late summer—grass drying, roses blooming, pecan and pear trees making ready for harvest. Overhead, live oaks twittered in the breeze, the sound stirring memories like grains of pollen hidden in the grass from some summer long ago. Grandmother Miller’s house had trees like those. At night, my father, Gil, and I used to lie under them. My father would talk about the stars and name the constellations, relating ancient Greek stories and staggering details about the time required for light to travel from those stars to our eyes. The stars we were looking at, he said, may have burned out long ago.
I thought he must have been the smartest man in the world, my father. In spite of our chaotic life, I did love him then. Over the years, I’d told myself I never felt that way.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Kemp’s voice was outside the swirl of memories, but even from a distance, the question felt intimate. We’d walked into a patch of moonlight, and he was watching me.
I was thinking about my father. For an instant, I was tempted to say it, but then I answered, “It’s a beautiful place. Daily, I mean.”
He drew back a little, seeming to doubt the answer.
“You’re lucky to live here,” I added.
He considered the statement, then shrugged. “Well, you know, the hometown always feels a little like an old shoe you haven’t worn in a while. You can squeeze back into it, but it rubs in a place or two.” He made it sound like a joke, but I had a feeling it wasn’t.
I wouldn’t have any idea. “I think it would be nice to have a place like that—one where you have history.”
He laughed softly, the sound a bit rueful. “Be careful what you wish for.” His voice lifted at the end of the words, but there was an edge underneath. It stirred my curiosity. Kemp wasn’t the devil-may-care post-digger-riding hometown boy he appeared to be. There was more to him. Something deeper. Why I wanted to find it, I couldn’t say. That curiosity will be the death of you one of these days, Grandmother Miller told me more than once. Usually, she said that right after Gil and I had tipped over the bookshelf by climbing on it, or slid down the stairway banister and discovered there was no way to stop at the end, or tried to jump a skateboard off the porch and landed headfirst in the flower bed. My parents encouraged creativity and experimentation—freedom. In their view, life was to be experienced, an adventure.
Grandmother Miller hated that view. It’s all well and good until you fall on the tile and skin your knee, she’d point out.
Suddenly, I knew why Daily seemed comforting and familiar to me. The sights and scents here reminded me of McGregor. Despite the fact that our visits with Grandmother Miller were never voluntary, McGregor was the closest thing to a hometown I’d ever had. It was the only place we did the normal things people do—eat supper at a table, say grace over the food, go to bed intentionally instead of falling asleep in a lawn chair while the adults laughed and drank and told stories around a campfire. At Grandmother Miller’s house, things were so predictable, the place felt like a box. It’s like being in a straitjacket here, my father would complain. Then he’d bend close to us and whisper, Just hang on a little longer, my little krauts. With any luck, we’ll be out of here before church on Sunday… .
Now, strolling the streets of Daily, Texas, I realized what I never would have admitted when my father tucked me into the big four-poster bed in the pink room where generations of Millers had lived and passed on. A part of me liked it. A part of me felt safe in the big bed, surrounded by the rose-paper walls. A part of me enjoyed the long table in the dining room and the way it felt to sit down to a meal in a place that couldn’t be picked up and moved on a whim.
The realization was strange and startling even now, guilt-coated in a way I wouldn’t have anticipated.
“Be careful what you take for granted.” As soon as the words came out, I realized that I hadn’t really meant to say them out loud.
“Touché.” Kemp slapped a hand over his chest as if I’d wounded him. The sound made Hawkeye jump sideways. Kemp leaned over and patted him on the back. “I guess it’s a little shallow to be complaining about my hometown when other people are wondering if theirs is still on the map
.”
I felt like an impolite guest, the kind who comes to your house for dinner and complains that the roast is too rare. He was, after all, walking me to his aunt’s house in the middle of the night after having spent hours driving, sawing apart trees, moving debris from the road, and then driving again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I moved around a lot as a kid. We never had a hometown. That’s all I was thinking.”
“The grass is always greener,” he assessed, and both of us laughed nervously.
We walked a little farther, past an old church and several turn-of-the-century clapboard houses. Some had been carefully restored, with lawns manicured, and some were weathered and sinking into the soil. Walking the street felt like a trip through time.
“So, your aunt told me you just moved back to Daily a few months ago,” I said, starting the conversation again. “She seems really happy about it.” He didn’t respond at first, and I looked up at him, but we were walking in the shadow of a tree. I couldn’t see his face, just little dapples of light sliding over his hair.
“Aunt Netta’s dream was always that we’d all stay in Daily. She had a picture in her mind, and when Aunt Netta’s got a vision, you’d better look out. When my sister, Lauren, was in college, the house next to Aunt Netta’s came up for sale, and Aunt Netta was all set to take up a contract on it. She figured Lauren would need someplace to live when she got out of school. The thing is that Lauren had just been home a week before that and told us she had a boyfriend in Kansas, and she wanted to go to grad school there. You tell Aunt Netta something she doesn’t want to hear, she just doesn’t hear it. She likes to control things.”
She likes to control things … My father’s complaint about Grandmother Miller. She has to control everything… .
“She means well,” Kemp added, and I felt reality shifting under me in a way my mind, tired and emotional now, couldn’t quite grasp.
What if Grandmother Miller meant well? What if I never understood, because I only knew one side of the story?
Shaking off the past, I focused on the conversation. It was always easier to talk about other people’s lives—something you could look at objectively. “You and your sister and Daily were all she talked about last night when we were in my van.” Did Grandmother Miller talk about us when we were away? Did she miss us?
Stop it. Stop. What’s the point in thinking about her now? You’re not a child anymore. You have your own life. You don’t need any of them.
I focused on Kemp again, on the present. “Your aunt loves you a lot.”
“I know she does.” His voice was tender, real. My shoulder brushed his, and I felt the warmth of his skin, the tight cords of muscle underneath. Then Radar smelled something in the ditch and tugged sideways, yanking me away.
Kemp reached for the leash. “Here, I’ll take one.”
I turned a half circle and gave him Hawkeye’s lead, because handing over Radar seemed like a cruel thing to do to someone you’d just met. “So why did you move home? Back to Daily, I mean?”
“Coaching job came open at the school last winter. Baseball. And they needed a math teacher, so here I am,” he answered matter-of-factly, as if this were a question he’d been asked more than once. “Couldn’t pitch after shoulder surgery, so I told them I’d come take it for the spring semester. Seemed like a way to help everyone out until I could go back to the team.”
“Really?” I had a strange sense of déjà vu as we left the tree shadows and stepped into the moonlight again. My parents had always been baseball fans. In our travels, we’d spent countless afternoons in the cheap seats at ballparks. “Where did you play?”
Kemp raised a brow. “You’re a baseball fan?”
“I’ve spent my share of time at dollar-hot-dog nights.”
His chin twisted upward and away, as if he were trying to get a better view of me. “You don’t seem like a dollar-hot-dog-night kind of girl.”
Somehow, that felt like a compliment. “I might surprise you. So where did you play?”
“Frisco, mostly. The RoughRiders. The Rangers off and on when I got called up.”
“Wow. Major league.” Suddenly it occurred to me that there might be a reason he looked familiar. “Maybe I’ve seen you play before.”
He laughed softly. “I doubt it. I never stayed with the big club a whole season. Would have my last year, if it hadn’t been for the shoulder injury, anyway.”
A cat ran across the road, and whatever else Kemp was going to say was eclipsed by the dogs barking and Radar tugging at his leash, gagging and yapping. “Radar!” I scolded, but he wouldn’t stop. I held on while he lurched forward, propelling me through a ditch and into someone’s yard as the cat disappeared under the porch of an old two-story house.
“Ssshhh!” I scolded. “Radar, stop!” But Radar, being Radar, couldn’t resist the chase.
A light came on in the house, and I threw my weight against the leash, trying to drag Don’s obnoxious dog back to the street. Any minute now, someone would come out with a shotgun, and, having survived the hurricane, I’d end up as a tragic fatality, mistaken for a burglar.
Reeling Radar in, I reached for his collar, but just as my fingers touched it, his quarry bolted from under the porch, ran past us, and scampered up a tree. Radar hung a U-turn, spun me like a jewelry box ballerina, and I ended up on the ground doing the splits with the leash wrapped around my ankle. In the house, more lights came on.
“Who’s out there?” a woman screeched from behind one of the darkened screens upstairs. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Miss Peach.” Kemp was laughing when he and Hawkeye caught up with me.
“Kempner Eldridge, is that you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is that aunt of yours having a party again?” Party came out in an obvious hail of spit.
“No, ma’am.” I felt Hawkeye licking my face and Kemp’s hand on my ankle, unwinding the leash. He was laughing so hard he could barely function.
“Y’all quit that racket. Get off my property or I’ll make a citizen’s arrest!” the voice screeched. I saw a face in the window, ghostly pale with no sign of a body attached to it, and then the blind slapped shut.
Kemp grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Come on!” he whispered against my ear. Laughing, he tugged my hand, and we bolted across the lawn, jumped the ditch, and ran down the street with the dogs barking and lights coming on. We didn’t stop until we reached an old two-story house at the end of the road. By then, I was breathless, and Kemp was laughing so hard he could only force out one word at a time. “It’s … been … a … while …” he coughed out, doubling over as he opened the backyard gate so we could put the dogs inside. I gathered that we’d arrived at Donetta’s house.
After closing the gate, Kemp led me into the house through the carport door. When the kitchen light flickered on, he was leaning against the doorframe, red-faced, his eyes glittering wet at the corners. “Sorry …” he gasped out. “It’s … been a … while … since I’ve … since I’ve … been citizen’s arrested … by Miss Peach.” Wiping his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, he opened the refrigerator and started looking for food, then stopped and leaned on the door handle, doubling over in another fit of hilarity. He had a great laugh—the kind that made you laugh along, even if you weren’t in on the joke.
“I gather this is something that’s happened before?” I inquired.
Kemp worked to catch his breath. “We gave Aunt Netta some gray hairs,” he admitted, then wiped his eyes again and started pulling Corningware from the refrigerator, reading the labels and describing the contents. “Let’s see … We’ve got meat loaf, chicken and rice, King Ranch casserole, red beans, and some kind of mystery stuff with noodles and hamburger in it… .”
“You pick. I could eat just about anything.”
“Lady’s choice.” He looked over his shoulder with a smile that landed somewhere in the pit of my stomach and fluttered around like a butterfly hoppi
ng from flower to flower. “Pop something in the microwave, and I’ll go get the dogs some food and water, and clean off your bed. Aunt Netta’s probably got some kibble in the storage shed. If there’s a stray around, she’ll feed it.”
He headed toward the laundry room off the kitchen. I stood watching him go, oddly fascinated with … well … the way he looked walking into the laundry room.
Slipping out the door, he caught me watching.
“Sure you don’t care which one I pick?” I asked, holding up a dish of leftovers as camouflage.
“No, ma’am. I’m game for anything.” He winked, then went outside. In a few minutes, I heard him come in the front door, then head upstairs, and the ceiling emitted a series of dull thumps as he moved things around overhead. By the time I was finished with the microwave, the noise upstairs had gone silent.
I made two plates of chicken and rice, poured tea from the refrigerator, and set it on the enamel-topped table in the middle of the kitchen, then sat waiting, but there was no sign of Kemp. Finally, I went upstairs looking for him.
I found him in what was obviously the sewing room, crossways on the bed that was supposed to be mine, with his head hanging off one side and his cowboy boots hanging off the other.
Sound asleep.
Chapter 15
Donetta Bradford
When you live in a place, most of the time you take it for granted. You get impatient with the way folks are, and sometimes having them around feels like an old suit of clothes you’ve worn so much you’re tired of it. You think, I need somethin’ different. I need a adventure someplace else. Maybe that’s what my daddy had in his mind when he run off into the world like the Prodigal Son.