by Lisa Wingate
“No, just a neighbor.”
“Then you’ll need to talk to his father for information.” Grabbing a bottle off the shelf, he turned around and walked off without another word.
“Well …” I coughed, standing there shocked. It had been a long time since anyone had the nerve to treat me like that. “Just like one of them out-of-towners to act that way. Come here, and think they’re better than the rest of us folks. Don’t know how to be neighborly. Probably just roll people through on a conveyor belt in that big-city hospital.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Gibson?”
Caleb Baker was standing next to me holding a box.
I flushed again, because I knew he had heard me. He followed my line of vision to the doctor. “Sorry about that,” I backpedaled. “That doctor just got my goat for a minute.”
Caleb grinned, his hazel eyes twinkling. “Not the friendliest in the world, is he?”
His good-natured grin cheered me up. Caleb had a way of making folks laugh. “Caleb Baker, are you supposed to be out of bed? I heard from Mazelle that you gave everyone quite a fright earlier. Mazelle said you might of died if she hadn’t got you right to Dr. Albright.”
Caleb smiled a private little smile, glancing over his shoulder at Mazelle. “That’s not exactly how it happened, but anyway, I’m fine now. Here’s some supplies they brought in the motor home.”
“Well, have you been able to contact your grandpa, so he’ll know you’re all right? I know he must be worried.” I remembered the year before, when Caleb nearly died in a car accident, and his granddad held a special prayer vigil.
“I asked the sheriff to radio a message over to Hindsville.” He set down the box of supplies and pulled off his long-sleeved shirt, using it to mop his forehead. “Getting hot, isn’t it?”
I glanced at the scars on his arm, even though I was trying not to look. “It’s good to have you here, Caleb.” I couldn’t express what was in my mind, the feeling that he was living proof it was possible to go through the worst of times and come out of it all right. “I mean, it’s good to see you up and around and feeling well.”
He blushed a little and hung his head, his light brown hair falling over his eyes. For just an instant, he reminded me of the shy little fat boy who used to sing in front of the choir box at his granddaddy’s church in Hindsville.
“Thanks,” he said finally.
He turned to leave, and I watched him walk out. Seeing Caleb Baker returned from the deathbed made me believe again that all things were possible.
That city doctor come back to the medicine shelf and grabbed a roll of gauze, knocking over Mazelle’s carefully arranged pile, then walked off.
He carried the bandage across the room to little Jimmy Ray’s cot, where Mazelle had elbowed Jenilee and Jimmy’s father out of the way and took over settling Jimmy Ray into bed. She was tucking a green army blanket tight around him, wrapping him up like a mummy. Dr. Albright didn’t seem to like that. He pulled the blanket loose and draped it over Jimmy, then demonstrated something with the bandage on his own arm, giving some instructions I couldn’t hear.
Mazelle watched what he did, nodding like she understood, then reached for the bandage.
Instead, the doctor turned and handed it to Jenilee. It was clear he’d been talking to her all along, and it was her he wanted to take care of Jimmy Ray. My mouth hung open, and across the room, Mazelle’s did, too.
Mazelle stepped back, her eyes flaring the way they did last year when Annette Abshier’s flower beds won the garden club’s annual contest. Mazelle didn’t take kindly to second place. She’d never had to. Her father being the town doctor, and her his only child, she’d been spoiled rotten all her life.
Mazelle spun on her heel and come across the room, looking around to see if anyone had noticed what went on. I turned quick to the shelf, so she wouldn’t know I’d been watching, but she come across the room to me anyway.
“Well, can you believe that!” she groused under her breath.
“Hmmm?” I tried to look busy. “Guess I must have missed something. I been busy trying to get these bandages stacked back on this shelf.”
Her eyes flashed fire. “I already had those bandages stacked on the shelf. How in the world did they get knocked on the floor?”
A chuckle tickled somewhere below my ribs, and I swallowed hard to make it go away. I didn’t dare laugh. “The doctor done it … uhhh … by accident, I mean.”
Mazelle pressed her lips together, tighter and tighter, and her face grew redder and redder, until she looked like an overripe persimmon starting to wrinkle up. “I don’t know why I even try to help. Here I am, nearly killed by the storm yesterday, our store torn to bits, my house ruined, down here trying to help folks, and does anyone appreciate it? Does anyone ask about what I’ve been through? Of course not. People in this town are just as backward and ungrateful as they’ve always been.” She huffed and braced her hands on her hips. “Since no one seems to appreciate my help around here, I guess I should drive out to the sheriff station at the lake, and see if I’m needed there. I heard this morning they might have as many as fifty people missing, or dead, or worse.”
June Jaans calling across the room interrupted Mazelle’s ranting. On purpose, I was sure. “You gonna bring those diapers here for this baby, Eudora?”
“I’m comin’.” I hated to admit it, but right then I was grateful for June Jaans and his big mouth. “I better tend to this,” I told Mazelle. She didn’t answer, just huffed, turned around, and snatched her handbag off the shelf.
I grabbed a couple of diapers and scooted out of there. When I got to June’s cot, I pulled back the cover and looked at the little boy, curled up as tight as he could get against June, looking up at me with big, worried brown eyes. “Poor little fella is a mess. Better get this diaper on him before the waterworks come on again,” I said, loud enough for Mazelle to hear. From the corner of my eye, I could see her hovering in the doorway, hoping we’d try to stop her from leaving.
I couldn’t help noticing a large bruise on June’s chest and a pocket of swelling the size of my fist. “The doctor look at that?” come from my mouth. Oh, Lord, what will Mazelle make of that? She’ll think I’ve got something going on with this old fart. Why I even cared about that bruise on his chest, I couldn’t say. June Jaans’s body was fully pickled. If he did have an injury, it probably couldn’t be hurting him too much.
“Yeah, the doctor said I got some ribs bruised, where I hit the steering wheel of my truck when the tornado rolled it over. Got a twisted ankle, too, but the doctor got it all wrapped for me. He said it’ll be better in a day or two. Least that’s what I think he said. He don’t take too much time to explain things, that city doctor, I mean. He just wrestles you around, asks you if it hurts about the time you got tears runnin’ down your face, then mumbles what’s wrong with ya as he’s headed on to the next person. He ain’t very reassuring.”
“He is a little odd,” I agreed, noticing that Mazelle was gone from the doorway. Finally. I couldn’t help asking. “You were rolled over in your truck?” Taking the sodden blanket off the little boy, I wiped him and laid the clean diaper under him. I needed to find a notebook and write down about the highway patrolman bringing in the mud-covered toddler, so I wouldn’t forget again.
“Yes, ma’am,” June said, swishing his hand through the air. “Caught right up like Dorothy and spun around on the wind. I half expected to see the Wicked Witch of the West come ridin’ by on a broomstick with the monkey men trailin’ behind her.”
I laughed in spite of myself. My mind went back to the year our whole high school class drove up to Kansas City to see The Wizard of Oz on the big theater screen at the Bijou, when it was brand-new. It was the first color picture we ever saw.
June sighed and leaned back against his pillow, looking tired. “I don’t suppose you remember that time that all of us went to see Dorothy and Toto on the big screen at the Bijou?” he asked.
I jerked back in su
rprise, afraid he had read my mind. “No, I don’t recall.” I wasn’t sure why I lied.
“Oh, Lordy, I do,” he said, chuckling again. “All the gals hung on to the boys when the Wicked Witch come after little Dorothy with her monkey men, and y’all cried when Dorothy sung that song about way up high, bluebirds fly. Can’t respeak the name of that just now.”
I turned my face away and pretended to be busy with the diapering. “Can’t either. Can’t recall.” “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” Watching Dorothy sing that song, that day, when I was young like her, pretty like her, a dreamer like her, was one of the fondest memories of my life.
“Funny, I can’t recall that… .” June whispered, lost in his thoughts.
I nudged his shoulder to get his attention, feeling odd, feeling a closeness I didn’t want. “Look here.” I motioned to the little boy. “Pay attention so you can change his diaper when he needs it again and I ain’t here.” My hands trembled as I worked the tapes loose. I couldn’t imagine why. “You pull these here tapes free like this, and you stick them down good and tight on this belly band. See? Like this?”
June nodded. “Don’t look too complicated.”
“Good. Then, here are two more diapers if he needs a change. If you can’t sit up to do it, call Jenilee or Weldon or someone else. Just about anybody can change a diaper.”
“I reckon,” he said, looking intently at me, trying to make me look back at him.
Instead, I focused out the door. “I’ve got to get to work down at the soup line. You take good care of this boy, June Jaans, until someone comes for him, you hear?”
“Um-hmm,” he replied, and I felt something warm, his fingers touching mine, trembling like mine.
“What was the name of that song?” His voice was barely a whisper, like the swish of a door opening on a hot summer afternoon. “The song Dorothy sung about bluebirds, what was the name?”
I stood there for just a moment, looking into his blue eyes and seeing that towheaded teenager who had been the best player on our school baseball team, the clown, the one everyone said would leave Poetry and go far. For just an instant he was that boy, the boy who took my sister, Ivy, to the USO dance in Springfield one night and never brought her back… .
“I don’t know,” I said, and pulled my hand loose from his. “I can’t recall the name of that silly old song. What does it matter, anyway?”
I walked away and didn’t look back.
Lord, Eudora, what’s wrong with you, standing around there talking with that dirty old drunk? He ain’t worth giving the time of day to.
I didn’t stop hurrying until I got to the motor home at the bottom of the hill, even though I wasn’t sure what I was running from. The men at the motor home had finished setting up their soup line and begun handing out bottles of water and other necessities from their pull-behind trailer. Some of them were busy raising army tents in the ball field, then moving folks down the hill to shelter.
The sense of calm was as strange as the sight of the tent village on the baseball field. With all those green tents from the armory, it looked like soldiers had set up camp in our town.
The young preacher who was in charge of the operation walked by carrying a shovel, his lips twisted with worry.
“Brother Colville, can I help you with somethin’?” I asked.
He stopped and fidgeted with the shovel handle. “Mrs. Gibson, we’re going to have to do something about … ummm … well … ummm … sanitation.” His freckled face turned as red as his hair. “We’ve got over seventy-five people who don’t have any homes to go to and no … well … no …”
“No outhouse,” I finished.
“That’s it exactly, ma’am,” he said.
I started to laugh. The desperate look on that young city fella’s face was just plain comical. I suppose he couldn’t imagine what folks would do without running water and flush toilets. “Well, young fella,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder and getting close to him like I was going to tell him a secret, “don’t take long to build an outhouse. You dig a hole in the ground, build a big box around it, and put a door on one side, then put a bench inside and cut a hole in it. Everything else pretty much takes care of itself.”
Brother Colville grinned sheepishly at me. “Well, I figured out that much. I just wondered if there were any Porta-Johns anyplace near town that we could go get.”
“Nope. I’m afraid we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” I told him. “Only Porta-Johns around here belong to Bell’s Construction Company, and they ain’t willing to bring anything down. Sheriff asked yesterday could he use one of their dozers, and Walter Bell said he don’t have a dozer in working order. I know that ain’t true because I seen them working with a dozer at a construction site on Ataberry Road not two days ago.” I shook my head, spitting air through my teeth in disgust, wondering how old man Bell and his worthless son, Shad, could be so selfish. “Some people are just a sorry sort.”
Brother Colville nodded, looking disappointed. “I guess I’d better get back to work the old-fashioned way, then.”
“Reckon.”
Janet’s car drove up in the parking lot, and I turned and headed up the hill. I saw Janet lean over and say something to Lacy in the passenger seat, then get out and walk into the armory carrying blankets.
Lacy stared right through me as I walked up to the car. For just a heartbeat, my mind told me it was Ivy sitting there. With her pale gray eyes and dark hair, she looked so much like Ivy.
“Hello, sweet one,” I said, wishing just this once she would talk to me. “You didn’t want to stay home with the other kids this time?” She didn’t respond. “Lacy, honey …” Again, she didn’t move. I laid my hand over hers on the doorframe.
“Look, there’s Jenilee,” I said as Jenilee Lane walked out the armory door for a breath of fresh air. I motioned to her. “Come here, Jenilee. Janet brung our little Lacy.”
Jenilee came to the car door and leaned close to Lacy. Lacy raised her eyes, a little spark coming into them, but she didn’t say anything.
I stood there watching, struck by how alike they were—two frightened little birds hiding in the grass together.
“You did a good job yesterday,” Jenilee said. “You’re a very brave girl.”
You’re a brave girl. I remembered saying that to Jenilee yesterday.
Lacy looked for a long time into Jenilee’s eyes, then slowly reached up and touched the hay-colored strands of Jenilee’s hair, bringing her closer. My heart stopped in my chest as Lacy moved her face close to Jenilee’s cheek and whispered … something.
Jenilee nodded. Looking into Lacy’s eyes, she took Lacy’s face in her hands. “Yes, it was. But we’re all right now. The tornado isn’t going to come back. Don’t worry.”
A car horn blared nearby, and Mazelle’s silver Chrysler roared across the parking lot, skidding to a stop in front of the armory door.
Jenilee stood up to look, then hurried toward the car.
Lacy ignored the racket and stared across the field like she was too far away to hear it.
CHAPTER 7
JENILEE
The driver laid on the horn as the silver car skidded to a halt. I rushed to the driver’s-side door, my heart pounding. On the armory steps, Caleb set down the stack of blankets he was carrying and also ran toward the car.
The smoked window lowered, and I realized it was Mrs. Sibley inside. My stomach twisted into a knot. “Is … is something wrong?”
She leaned out, both hands clasped on the halfway-open window. Her urgency lit my nerves like a sparkler. “Well, of course something’s wrong, Jenilee,” she sneered, then looked over my shoulder as Caleb stopped behind me. “Caleb, is the sheriff back yet?”
Caleb glanced at me and shrugged his shoulders, so I answered the question. “No. The last I heard, he went down to the rescue center at the lake. Can I help …” Can I help you? What a stupid question. Of course not.
She rolled her eyes and slung her head
sideways, causing her helmet of fluffy gray hair to bounce up, then settle into place again. “Well, not unless you have a way to get a fifty-gallon barrel off a bull’s head.” She turned to Caleb again, talking to him instead of me. “I was just on my way down to the rescue station at the lake—I was needed there, you see—and just as I came onto farm road Nine-thirty-five, right there in the road, there was a … oh … ga-ra-cious! There it is!” She pointed far down Main Street.
Caleb and I turned to look as a massive Charolais bull crashed through the remains of the pharmacy on the edge of town.
“What the … ?” Caleb muttered. “It’s got a barrel stuck on its head.”
Dr. Albright stepped out of the armory and walked down the steps, scowling as he approached the car. “Is something wrong out here? I heard a car horn.”
I shaded my eyes, trying to get a better look at the big white bull as it crashed through town, its head and neck wedged inside a crushed fifty-gallon metal barrel. “How in the world … ?”
Mazelle leaned farther out the window, pointing down the hill, waving her finger. “That thing rammed right into my car on the county road! I’m lucky to be alive. It knocked me right into the guardrail of the bridge.” She adjusted her glasses and peered at Dr. Albright, waving her finger at the dented fender and broken headlight on her car. “Call the sheriff. Tell him to bring a rifle. That creature is liable to kill someone! I’m lucky to be alive.”
Dr. Albright glanced down the hill, but the bull had disappeared into what remained of the old sale barn. The muted sound of crashing and bellowing testified to the fact that he was still inside.
“Hurry, now!” Mazelle screeched. “They can get him while he’s still trapped inside.”
Dr. Albright shrugged, still confused about what was going on. “I’ll go call the sheriff on the radio.”
“No!” I heard myself say. “No. Don’t call the sheriff. That’s Mr. Jaans’s old bull, Charlie. He’s a big pet. He’s just scared.”
“I’m sure the sheriff can handle it.”