by Lisa Wingate
Her husband nodded, rushed over to kiss her quickly, whispered something close to her ear, then ran out the door behind Matt. The engine roared, and the truck skidded away.
I looked at Mrs. Whittrock, watched the tears seep from the corners of her eyes and wet the fringes of her hair, heard the low sound of grief exhale from her like a painful breath. I felt her hand squeeze mine, and my mind traveled back to Mama, when she held my hand in the hospital and looked at me and cried.
“It’s going to be all right,” I whispered, the same thing I said to Mama back then.
I thought about all the times I had passed those fancy houses on the lake, and hated those people with their money and their brand-new cars and their attitudes. I realized now how wrong that was. It seemed back then that they were so different from us, but now I could see the thin line that separated us—just houses, cars, clothes. All things that could be swept away in an instant.
Mrs. Whittrock pulled her hand away, pressing her palms over her face and closing her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but I doubt she knew why I said it.
I stood up and walked to Caleb’s cot not far away.
He smiled at me, looking sheepish. “Sorry for all the drama.”
I slid my hands into the pockets of my jeans. It felt strange to be there talking to him. Caleb, the class clown, the chubby kid who made fat jokes so people would like him, talking to Jenilee, the invisible one who never said anything, so they wouldn’t notice her at all.
“It’s all right,” I said finally.
He had kind eyes, hazel with gold flecks in the middles. “Thanks for helping me. I really thought I’d make it all right. I haven’t passed out like that since I lost all that weight after the car accident last December.”
“You should be more careful the next time.” Geez, what a stupid thing to say. The next time … what?
“I guess I should. Anyway, thanks.” Self-consciously, he pulled the cuffs of his denim shirt over the burn scars on his lower arms.
“You’re welcome.” Silence fell between us. I turned away, so he wouldn’t think I was looking at the scars. “You probably better get some rest.”
“Oh, I’m all right. I’m going to get up in a minute and see what I can do to help.”
“Well … take care …” I searched for something to say. What did you say to someone with whom you’d just shared some of the most horrible moments of your life, yet whom you didn’t know at all? “I mean … be careful, all right?”
“I will. You too.”
I wrapped my arms around myself and crossed the room to the door. Standing on the loading dock, I watched heat waves rise from the pavement of the parking lot as the morning sun began to warm up.
Just like any other morning.
I watched absently as Nolan Nelson, the high school principal, set up a makeshift soup line at the corner of the asphalt.
“… beans and ham,” Mr. Nelson’s voice boomed through the still air, seeming out of place, too loud for this day of stifled sobs and hushed realities. People in the parking lot looked up as he stirred an enormous black kettle on the tailgate of his pickup and spoke with one of the sheriff’s deputies.
Mr. Nelson’s voice drifted over the murmur of other voices the same way it drifted through the halls at school. The familiarity was comforting. “Figured I’d better make use of all that firewood the storm delivered to my place,” he said. “Not much else left. I had some beans down in the cellar, and everything that used to be in my smokehouse landed on my living room floor, so I scrounged up a ham, washed that old kettle in the front yard, and started cooking. I can’t vouch for how it’ll taste. I haven’t cooked over an open fire since Boy Scouts in 1959.” He filled a bowl and gave it to the sheriff’s deputy, then filled two more and started handing them out.
I had never liked Mr. Nelson until that day. He and I were always crossways about school. He hassled me about being gone so much and talking about leaving school early. He told me that if I’d just apply myself, I could have the grades to get a scholarship to college, instead of barely scraping through high school.
“You’re a smart girl, Jenilee,” he’d say. “You like to read, you like to learn. You’re interested in science, and you’ve learned so much working at the vet clinic. There’s no reason why you couldn’t pursue that, pick up your grades and aim for a scholarship. Med school. Vet school. Whatever appeals to you. You have the ability, but you have to put in effort.”
I’d tell him I didn’t have time to study because I was busy taking care of Mama and Nate, and working to help keep the farm going. I’d look at the floor and tell him I didn’t give a crap about school, which wasn’t really true, and I couldn’t imagine what I would do with a scholarship—that I was going to have to quit the vet clinic to go to work writing invoices at Bell’s construction company, because the money was better. He’d shake his head and look at me as if I were no better than dirt, and tell me there wasn’t any future in that, and I should go to college, and blah-blah-blah.
I had to give Mr. Nelson credit for determination. He’d even suggested that we get a nurse to come out and look in on Mama, so that I could be in school more of the time. I told him we couldn’t afford a nurse, and Daddy didn’t want one around anyway, but Mr. Nelson insisted on talking to Daddy about it. I couldn’t hear what was said when Daddy met him at the yard gate, but it ended with Daddy yelling, and Mr. Nelson leaving in a hurry. That was the end of that. The principal was not a big man, and, like everyone else in town, he knew Daddy’s reputation. I think he was glad when I finally graduated, and the only Lane he had left to worry about was Nate.
Now, I watched Mr. Nelson serving food, holding hands, smiling and asking after people. I thought about him cooking on a campfire outside of his fallen-down house and taking the time to bring food when he could have been sifting through his house trying to salvage his possessions, as people in town were now beginning to do. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I should have listened more to him and less to Daddy.
When Mr. Nelson had served all his beans, Mrs. Gibson arrived with her daughter-in-law and began dishing up chili from the trunk of Janet’s car. From the backseat, Janet handed out blankets, towels, and coats. I felt guilty for not bringing things from our house. Old habits die hard, and I wasn’t used to thinking about what other people needed. We Lanes were usually pretty busy just trying to get by.
Mr. Nelson walked over and gave Mrs. Gibson a hug. “Lordy, look at that fine batch of chili. I’ll tell you what, if that chili would have come here first, I wouldn’t have been able to give away my beans.”
“Oh, Nolan, cut that out. It’s just plain old chili, but it’ll feed people.” Mrs. Gibson backhanded him halfheartedly, and he ducked aside.
I crossed my arms over myself, wishing I could be like they were—part of things, close with other people, inclined to help when people needed it. I wished I wasn’t standing there worrying about what Daddy would do if I went home and got things from the house and gave them away to people.
Mrs. Gibson saw me watching and scooped up two bowls of chili, then started toward me, limping just a little. “Oh, Jenilee Lane, it’s good to see you here,” she said, handing me one of the bowls. “I was sure worried about you last night.”
“I’m all right.”
She smiled again, a fluttery smile, like she had a butterfly caught in her teeth. “We got over to Weldon and Janet’s all right. No damage over at their house.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wished she would walk off so I could go back into the armory and not have to remember yesterday. “I’m … um … sorry about your house.”
She shrugged and set the other bowl of chili on the steps, then turned around to lean against the cement dock beside me. “Don’t matter. I wouldn’t care if I lost a hundred houses, so long as all the kids are all right. I’ve lost things in my life, and I’ve lost people. I’ve come to know it’s the people that matter. Anyway, there are lots of folk
s worse off than me. It’s good to remember that.”
“Um-hmm,” I said, looking at the chili and feeling a lump in my throat. I didn’t think I could eat anything.
“How about your brothers? Have you heard any news?”
I shook my head, setting the chili on the armory steps. “I better get back in there with Doc,” I said, feeling tears start to prickle. It doesn’t help anything to cry.
She reached across the space between us and took my hand in hers, then covered it with her other hand. “You’re a brave girl, Jenilee Lane,” she said, just as she had the day before. “You done a brave thing saving me and Lacy yesterday. I want to thank you for that. Not everyone would of done it. Who’d of thought that—”
She stopped, and our eyes met for an instant. I looked at her gray hair, coming out of its bun in curly wisps, and her face, wrinkled from years in the sun, and her eyes, blue-violet behind her eyeglasses. Her breath seemed to be caught behind the overhang of her chest, hiding the rest of what she was going to say—the part she thought she maybe shouldn’t say now, after everything that had happened. What she would have said a day ago, without a second thought.
Who would of thought one of you Lanes would help somebody out?
I pulled my hand out of hers and turned away, muttering, “I better go help in the armory. I’m not really hungry.” Rushing up the steps, I left her.
I knew if she looked at me, really looked at me, she would see the truth—that I wasn’t anything like her and Mr. Nelson, Weldon and Doc Howard. I was only there because I was afraid to be anywhere else, because I didn’t want to be alone. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring blankets, or cook food, or search our cabinets for medicine and bandages.
But I imagine, deep down, she knew all of that about me, just like everyone else did. They knew we Lanes didn’t do anything just to be charitable, and I was still Jenilee Lane, a grown-up version of the little girl they all whispered about behind their hands. Poor little thing doesn’t have any upbringing. Her mama’s been sick since she was just little, that farm’s falling in around their ears, and that father of hers, well, he’s … The descriptions would vary. They called him everything from a no-good drunk to a criminal.
I knew that as soon as these days passed, things would go back to the way they were before, and they would say those same words again. Words like that don’t go away just because a tornado blows through town.
I heard Mrs. Gibson coming after me, her feet scrunching heavily in the gravel as she walked around to the steps. I knew she was right behind me with the two bowls of chili.
She caught up with me just inside the door. She looked past me instead of at me, and shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. What she hadn’t said hung between us. Both of us heard it.
She straightened her back and puffed out a determined sigh. “Jenilee Lane, you take a break and eat this food,” she scolded, then turned to Doc Howard, who was standing nearby. “You too, Doc.”
Doc Howard accepted a bowl, sinking wearily into a chair to eat. He looked pale and his hands were shaking as he lifted the spoon to his mouth.
Mrs. Gibson noticed it, too. “Doc, you need to get some rest. You’re gonna give yourself another round of heart trouble.”
Doc Howard rolled his gaze upward. “You been downtown talking to my wife.” He smiled beneath his thick white mustache. “She send you up here to mollycoddle me?”
Mrs. Gibson huffed and braced her hands on her hips. “No, but I did see her downtown, when we took some chili to the sheriff’s temporary station down there. She’s pretty busy running the dispatch radio, but she’s worried about you. A man who just got over a heart attack ought not to be doing this kind of work. Not for this many hours, anyhow.”
Doc took a bite of chili and rolled it around in his mouth. “Not much choice about that. Anyway, I’m just helping out since they brought that Dr. Albright in here late last night. It’s not so bad now that we’ve got a real doctor.”
Mrs. Gibson glanced suspiciously around the room. “Don’t see him here.”
Doc shrugged, wiping a chili bean from his beard. “He went out the back door. Reckon he had to use the bushes. Why don’t you go check, Eudora? He might be in some kind of trouble out there.”
“Oh, Doc, you hush!” Mrs. Gibson flushed red. “Honestly!”
Mazelle Sibley piped in, from where she was carefully arranging bandages on the supply shelves. “Dr. Albright has been gone over-long. Maybe someone should check… .” She flushed, as if she’d suddenly realized what Doc had meant by use the bushes.
Doc Howard looked proud of himself. He always called Mazelle Sibley, Mrs. Gibson, and the rest of the garden club “the bossy biddy society.” He liked to get the best of them when he could. “Mazelle, for heaven’s sake, leave the man alone,” he said. “Reckon he’s entitled to a minute to himself. It’s been a long morning. You been hanging on his coattails since the minute you got here.”
Mazelle coughed indignantly, then threw her chin up and went back to arranging bandages. “Well, it only comes natural, my father having been the doctor in town for sixty years. You know I always was his best assistant.”
Doc Howard rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I know. You told me that. Once or twice.” He glanced sideways at me and winked, then went back to his chili.
Mrs. Gibson leaned over to look in my bowl. “You eat that chili, Jenilee Lane. You need something to eat. The sheriff told me you been savin’ lives this mornin’.”
Over by the medicine shelves, Mazelle coughed and smacked her teeth just loudly enough for us to hear.
Mrs. Gibson opened her mouth to say something, but the wail of a siren outside drowned her out as a car skidded up to the loading platform.
Doc set his chili on the floor and stood up as a highway patrolman rushed in carrying a mud-covered toddler bundled against his chest in a blanket.
“Doc! I got a little boy, probably around two years old.” The highway patrolman unwrapped the blanket and tried to lay the naked, mud-covered toddler on the floor, but the baby screamed and hung on with all ten fingers and toes.
Doc Howard chuckled, relief lifting the corners of his thick white beard as he took a rag and wiped the dirt from the baby’s eyes and mouth. “Can’t be too much wrong with this one. He’s stuck like a tick.”
The patrolman smiled, and I was surprised by how good it felt to see someone smile.
“This one’s a miracle,” he said. “I was just driving along Highway Forty-two, and I looked over and saw a ball of mud moving in the ditch. No houses around or anything. I’m thinking I’m going to rescue a dog or something. I climb down the ditch and pick up this thing, and there it is, a little boy. He grabs aholt of me and he ain’t lettin’ go. Don’t have no idea who he is, but I put it out over the radio. You know someone’s desperate to find this little guy.”
Doc continued trying to check over the child while he clung to his rescuer. “See if he’ll let you hold him, Jenilee, so I can get a good look at him. Mazelle, go see if you can find Dr. Albright.”
I reached out tentatively, but the boy turned his face away and clung tighter to the patrolman’s jacket.
Doc ruffled the baby’s muddy hair and chuckled again. “I think you’re stuck with him, Ray. He’s adopted you whether you like it or not.”
Ray chuckled. “Well, that’d be fine, except I’ve got to get back out in the car and drive those backroads. There’s still people out there needing help.”
No one answered. None of us wanted to consider the idea that there might still be injuries or fatalities.
Looking at the little boy, apparently still strong and healthy under that coating of mud, I felt my spirits rise. If something so tiny could survive the storm, then surely Nate was all right.
“O.K., Jenilee, you’re going to have to take him and turn him around so I can get a better look at him,” Doc ordered. “I’m amazed to say it, but as far as I can tell so far, all this little guy needs is a bath and hi
s mama.”
“Wow, that is somethin’,” the patrolman said. Hugging the little boy against his chest, he rested his chin on the boy’s head. He closed his eyes for just a moment, then began to pry loose the grip on his jacket. “Come on, little fella. Time to go now.”
“Have you seen a white four-door Ford pickup with a brown stock trailer behind?” I asked, unwilling to miss the chance for outside information. “My brother and my father were headed to the cattle sale in Kansas City yesterday. They should have been on their way home when the tornado hit.”
“I haven’t seen it. But I’ve only been in this county. Could be they’re stopped somewhere farther north. All the roads are blocked up there. No phones, so don’t give up hope. A lot of people out there are still trying to get in touch with family.” He looked at the boy in his arms again, seeming reluctant to give him up. “Just like this little guy. You know, there wasn’t a house or an abandoned car anywhere near where I found him. Could be he’s been wandering a while, maybe from one of the campgrounds or something. How he survived is just … well, a miracle.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
He peeled the little boy loose and handed him to me. I held him clumsily as he squirmed in my arms and started crying, trying to get back to the patrolman. Mrs. Gibson was beside me quickly, taking him away. She held him while Doc finished checking him; then she picked up the blanket and nestled him to her chest. He stopped crying and burrowed against her like a kitten.
“There, that’s better,” she said, laying a hand over his hair and bouncing him gently up and down. Clinging to her flowered house-dress, he sighed as his eyes started to close. She looked at me and winked. “Whenever you hold a little one, you bundle its face right here. Right against your heart, see? So he can hear it. It reminds him of his mama, and that’s a comfort.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know the first thing about holding babies, not human babies anyway. “It works with kittens, too,” I said, because I knew about kittens, and puppies, and calves, and other orphaned baby creatures.