Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  Diane Sawyer came on again and reported that flower shops on the East Coast had already had a spike in sales that morning. “So I guess we owe a debt of thanks to one man, Ronald Bradford, a hero of Hurricane Glorietta in more ways than one, and a voice from the storm reminding us that even when so much is lost, some things are found. Oftentimes, those things we discover in the storm are the most valuable of all.” She went on to report that GMA had tried to contact Donetta Bradford (me) of Daily, Texas, but been unsuccessful, although, according to sources in the town, Mrs. Bradford and her friends had all made it safely home. GMA was in the process of getting word to Ronald that I was all right, and they’d have an update later in the week.

  When the report was over, Imagene ran to the kitchen and grabbed a napkin to blow her nose into. She brought me one, too, because by then I needed it.

  “Land sakes, Donetta, if you’da had your phone on, you coulda been on Good Mornin’ America!”

  The idea made my head whirl like a tail-chasin’ dog, and I had to reach out and catch hold of the sofa. “If Good Mornin’ America’d called my house, I think I woulda fainted dead away, Imagene. It was hard enough to believe when the Fort Worth newspaper wanted to talk to me, but this … this is … well, I hadn’t even got words for what this is!”

  “This is a miracle.” Imagene’s eyes met mine, and I knew she was right. While I’d been worryin’ and plottin’ and plannin’, my foxhole prayers’d been answered in more ways than one. The Lord had His hand on the situation all along.

  I shoulda known that, of course. He always does.

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed. “It is a miracle.” The clock caught my eye, and I grabbed my purse off the table. If I’d been a gunfighter in the old West, I would’ve been strapping on my six-shooters. “We better get on down to the hotel.”

  “Right behind you like a cart on a horse,” Imagene answered, and I could tell them were fightin’ words. “We’ll see how Betty Prine feels about comin’ up against a star on Good Morning America.”

  The two of us headed off for town like Wyatt Earp and Doc Hol-liday goin’ to the O.K. Corral. When we turned onto Main Street, there was Betty Prine waiting on the sidewalk with the young fella who’d got the fire marshal’s job when Lloyd Graves retired. Word was, the new fella was a stickler for the rules and all that sort of thing. Word also was that Harold Prine’d sold him a foreclosed chunk of land from the bank, on the cheap.

  “Well, there she is,” Imagene groused as we parked down the street past the café, which must’ve been busy this morning, because cars were lined up all the way to the hotel building. “Got her big nose up in the air, like usual. Maybe she’ll fall off the curb and twist an ankle.”

  “Imagene!” I felt a chuckle bubblin’ up. Imagene and me could always count on each other for a laugh in the bad times. Your best gal friend’ll do that, if she’s a really good one.

  Imagene shrugged. “You know, like in that old Irish proverb about your enemies—If God can’t turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles, so we’ll know them because they’re limpin’.”

  I leaned over and looked her in the eye. “That wasn’t what you were thinkin’, Imagene Doll.”

  She let out a wicked giggle. “Well, all right, I really was hopin’ Betty’d fall off the curb and land in the gutter. I’ll repent later. Right now, that’s how I feel.”

  “You see anybody that looks like a reporter from the Fort Worth paper?” I checked the rearview mirror.

  “Nope.”

  An itchy, worried feelin’ crawled up my back like a nerve about to pinch. “I hope she shows up… .”

  “Well, even if not, we got Good Mornin’ America.”

  “Betty don’t look like she watched Good Mornin’ America.” I grabbed the door handle. “Might as well get out, she’s headed this way.”

  Imagene reached across and caught my sleeve. “Wait. Maybe she’ll fall off the curb yet.”

  “Imagene Doll, you got some of the devil this mornin’.” I started laughing again, and we clambered out of the car, giggling and carrying on.

  Betty stopped on the sidewalk in front of the café, her hands working at her sides, like her trigger finger was itchin’. She had on a black skirt and a black short-sleeved sweater, which seemed to fit the occasion.

  “All she needs is a pointed hat and a broomstick,” Imagene muttered close to my ear, and we broke up in giggles again.

  Betty drew her chin into her neck like an old toad about to croak. “Well, I don’t see what you two have to cackle a—” all of a sudden, there was a commotion inside the café. I saw Betty’s lips finish—“bout,” but I couldn’t hear her at all.

  All I could hear was chairs scraping and people hollering, “There she is! There she is!” There was a rush at the door, and then Imagene and me were surrounded by folks, all talking at once.

  “We saw you on the show!”

  “How about that Ronald?”

  “That man knows how to tell it!”

  “Did you ever think he had it in him?”

  “Gal-ee! You better give that man a hug and a kiss when he come home, cher!” That one was Sister Mona, I could tell by the voice. I caught of glimpse of her two sons, Ernest and Bluejay, towerin’ over the crowd. Guess they didn’t have any reason to hide out at the ranch, now that word was out.

  “I think we oughta print that speech on a T-shirt and sell it in the souvenir shop!” Bailey Henderson called out. For Bailey, everythin’ was a moneymakin’ opportunity.

  “Daily, Texas, on Good Mornin’ America! How’s that for a fine bunch a’ taters?”

  “And-and-and y-you thought he was f-f-fishin’, he was fishin’.” That last one was Doyle. Beside him, Lucy was jumping up and down like Zacchaeus, tryin’ to see over the crowd, her hands flapping in the air.

  “Is a Good Morn-eeng Amer-ca call the café! They wanna you come give the story in New York City on TV!”

  Outside all the commotion, I caught sight of Betty Prine, just standing on the sidewalk, looking plumb dumbfounded. She unbuttoned the neck of her sweater, like all of a sudden it was too tight, and her lip began curling on one side, flashing an eyetooth. The inspector started past her, but she stuck out an arm and caught him in the chest.

  A car pulled up and stopped in the street. It had the name of the Fort Worth newspaper right on the side. The driver’s door opened, and a young lady hopped out and jogged up onto the curb. “I’m looking for Donetta Bradford of Daily, Texas. The wife of Ronald Bradford.”

  Everyone pointed at me, but they probably didn’t need to. I was the one red as a ripe plum and floatin’ about a foot off the ground.

  The crowd parted then, and I heard Doyle offer to park the reporter’s car, and I saw Betty hustlin’ that young fire marshal back to his vehicle, and Bob asking if we wanted to do the interview in the Daily Café, but all of it seemed far away, like it was happening to someone else.

  For just a minute, I slipped out of my own shoes and I could see the bigger picture, like a scene in a shadow box. I saw it the way it would look from high above, up there with God and His angels. There was the main street of our little town, the buildings just catching the morning sun, yawning and stretching, and waking up to a new day. A day when anything might happen. There were friends and neighbors, and new friends gathered ’round, laughing and cheering, sharing in the certainty that, even with all that can be wrong with the world, or the weather, or a marriage, or a person, or in one little town, there’s always more that’s right.

  We can see it, if we look from a distance. All things work together for our good.

  “That’s me,” I heard the woman with the tall (and might I add, nicely done) red hair say. “Ronald’s my husband.” The woman smiled then, underneath that big hair. She had on Rumba Red #5, but you probably wouldn’t know it if you didn’t know your lipstick. It didn’t matter anyway. That smile would’ve been somethin’ special in any color, because it was soul-deep.

  “I’m Donetta Bra
dford of Daily, Texas,” she said.

  And for the first time in her whole life, she couldn’t think of anyone else she’d rather be.

  Chapter 26

  Kai Miller

  From turquoise waters off the Yucatan, I watched Donetta and Ronald on Good Morning America. I caught the show completely by happenstance. I was walking past the casino lounge, getting ready to follow the last passengers onto shore in Cancun, and a familiar voice brought me up short. I stood there with my mouth hanging open.

  Suddenly, I was back in Daily, Texas. Seeing Donetta on the screen was like going home again. The camera, and the GMA crew, loved her, and she seemed surprisingly comfortable in the spotlight. Beside her, Ronald, the tall, heavyset man I’d seen in fishing photos around Donetta’s house, looked like he’d rather be staked to an anthill than making a guest appearance on national TV. He wasn’t embarrassed about what he’d said on the radio, he told the anchor while stroking his salt-and-pepper goatee; he just couldn’t believe all the fuss it had started.

  “Guess when admittin’ your feelings is a national event, that ain’t a good sign,” he commented dryly, and the anchor laughed. “I can only figure it was somethin’ a lot of regular folks needed to hear.” Turning a cowboy hat nervously in his fingers, he looked up at the camera, his eyes piercingly direct. “I needed that reminder myself, and I’m about as regular a fella as you can get. I come from a normal family, and I grew up in a nice little town. My daddy was a wheat farmer and a fine, honest man, and he was married to my mama for sixty-one years. In all that time, I never once heard them talk about how they met or why they got together or how they felt about each other. I guess sometime while I was comin’ up, I got the idea that a real man don’t talk about that kind of thing. But I’ll tell you, when you see something big as Hurricane Glorietta breathin’ down your neck, being a man’s man don’t matter half as much as you thought it did. All you care about’s that the people you love are safe.”

  Donetta cast an adoring gaze and reached across the sofa to slip her hand into his, as she and Ronald related their hurricane stories. The Gifts From the Sea van and I got a mention, as did the members of the Holy Ghost Church. Donetta cleverly slipped in a plug for a benefit fund accepting donations to help the members of the Holy Ghost repair damage to their homes, businesses, and church building. “They got a lot of work ahead of them, but they’re strong folks, and we’re gonna stay friends for a long time. That’s the good thing in all this, I think. God uses storms to bring folks together. You learn that we all got to depend on each other. Not a one of us is strong enough to go it alone, when there’s a hurricane overhead. It’s a good lesson, and you’re never too old or too young to learn it.” Donetta looked right at the camera and winked, like she knew I’d be watching.

  The wink reminded me of Kemp. He had Donetta’s smile.

  At the end of the segment, Diane Sawyer asked if Donetta planned to take a cruise to make up for the one she’d missed.

  She regarded Ronald hopefully, but then said, “Well, we’ll see. Right now, we’re just enjoyin’ the time together, and we’re makin’ plans to go down and help the Holy Ghost Church with rebuildin’, when they’re ready. My nephew’s even gonna take the Daily High School baseball team to get in on the work, eventually. Meantime, Ronald and me are keeping ourselves busy puttin’ in some fall flowers in the yard. Been a long time since we did that.” She gave Ronald a tender smile, and he returned it likewise, then cleared his throat and turned back to Diane Sawyer as if he’d forgotten for a moment that they were on national TV.

  “It’s amazin’ how much trouble a truckload of mums and pansies’ll get a fella out of,” he joked. “You fellas out there remember that.”

  Everyone laughed, and then Diane Sawyer closed the interview with, “A few words of wisdom from deep in the heart of Texas.” Then she thanked everyone and went to commercial.

  I stood holding my tote bag and sun hat, oddly captivated by the TV. A shampoo commercial came on, but in my mind I saw Donetta and Ronald planting pansies outside their little yellow house on a sunny fall afternoon in Daily. I knew how the air would smell, the way the grass would sound rustling in the no-man’s-land outside the fence, how the light would filter through the canopy of overgrown trees above.

  Tears crowded my eyes when Good Morning America came on again, and Donetta and Ronald were gone. The bartender looked at me like I was nuts.

  I moved on with all the enthusiasm of a commuter driving the usual route to and from work. In Playa del Carmen, when I normally would have relished the challenge of perusing the markets looking for beads, antiquities, tiny Mayan totems, and other potential treasures, my mind was miles away. I finally gave up and stood in the ferry line to go back to Cozumel and the ship. I listened as a Mexican tour guide returning from the ruins at Tulum entertained his group with tales of the Mayan prophecy that the end of the world was approaching with an upcoming winter solstice.

  He laughed when one of his charges said that, since there were only a few more years left, she was cashing out her 401K to spend her time traveling.

  “I would save the dineros.” The tour guide’s thick accent rolled over the noise of crowds and street vendors selling sun hats and sombreros. “People only use this prophecy to sell books and movies in Hollywood. On the Mayan calendar, this day is the end of an age. In the end of the age, the prophecy says that the people will have ceased to live as human beings, and something big will happen, and the people will see each other again. I think it is like this here, when the hurricane comes. Before the hurricane, I am a busy man, and my neighbor, he hurries each day, as well. I do not know him, and we pass on the street, and our eyes are filled with many concerns, and so I do not see him and he does not see me. But the hurricane comes, and there is no electricity, and no light, and we cannot go anywhere for days. I notice my neighbor standing at the fence, and I go out to him and ask if his family is well. I give him cheese and a tin of crackers, and he gives me candles and matches. We stand and talk for many hours, and after this, when we pass on the street, we no longer walk by without seeing.”

  The tour guide paused, his eyes dark and soulful as he took in the crowd. “This is how the change comes. The storm opens the eyes and then the heart, as well. A crisis is only an opportunity riding a dangerous wind, si?”

  The ferry came in, and the tour guide waved good-bye, leaving his charges with something to think about.

  I boarded with the ferry line, rode the choppy waters back to Cozumel, and went to my crew cabin to stow my purchases. When I opened the jewelry boxes, nestled in the top tray lay a tiny handful of quartz crystals, amethyst, limestone fossils from Daily, and shards of thick colored glass from the old church that had sheltered us during the hurricane.

  Letting my tote bag fall to the floor, I touched the treasures one by one, dropping them into my palm. I sat down on the bed and carefully turned each object, studying from every angle. Finally, I clutched them in my palm, lay back against the pillow, and stared at the ceiling until my eyes fell closed.

  My mind traveled back to Daily, settling first at Donetta’s yellow house on B Street, then drifting toward downtown, through the shadows of the oak trees, past the fading house where Miss Peach stood behind the storm door with her cat, past the live oaks that shook hands over B Street, to the intersection of Main, where I turned the corner, rocking like a ship at sea, sailing past the Daily Café, the hotel building, the Daily Hair and Body sign, across town to the high school, where the baseball stadium lay empty in the evening light, the chalk lines drawn and the scoreboard lit up, but the stands vacant.

  I searched for Kemp, but he wasn’t there.

  Laughter drifted from somewhere beyond the field house. I followed the sound to the practice area out front, where an impromptu Wiffle ball game was underway. Sly stood at home plate, his plastic bat waving in the air, ready for the pitch. The ball flew toward home, a curve. The batter swung, missed. The catcher caught the ball, stood up in one gracef
ul movement, pulled off the face mask. Long tresses of chestnut hair tumbled over her shoulders, toying with the sunlight, shimmering like liquid.

  She smiled at Kemp, tossed the ball up and caught it, then dropped her catcher’s mitt on home plate. “He’s out,” she purred, as long, lithe movements carried her toward the pitcher’s mound. “Game over.”

  Kemp grinned as Jen, Jenny, Jennifer floated to the mound and hooked her arm in his. “Let’s go,” she whispered in his ear, and then the two of them turned and left the field.

  At home plate, Sly stood bewildered, the tip of his plastic bat slowly descending toward the ground.

  “Wait!” I called after Kemp. “Wait! The game’s not over! Wait!” Then suddenly, Kemp was Gil. My little brother was walking across a long field with no buildings in sight. He was healthy, his body lean and boyish, his skin tan and ruddy, his blond hair streaked by the sun, falling in curls over his ears. He stopped, turned toward me, smiled, his blue eyes alive with light. “A crisis is only an opportunity riding a dangerous wind,” he said, and then he continued across the field, moving farther and farther away.

  “Wait!” I called. “Wait! Stop!”

  The notes of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” drifted to my ear, pulled me away from the field and Gil. I tried to stay where I was, to follow Gil, to call him back to me, but the music grew louder, more insistent.

  In a gush of air, I was back in bed, jerking upright, aware that I was crying out my brother’s name. For an instant, I wasn’t sure where I was. Then I realized I was in my cabin on the ship. With the dawning awareness came a familiar disappointment. For the past five days, every time I’d fallen asleep, my dreams began in Daily and ended in a strange mishmash of the past. The experience was joyful, then painful.