Good Hope Road

by Lisa Wingate

  My dander rose when she mentioned Jenilee’s name that way, like it was a dirty word to spit out. I realized I had said it that way in the past myself. “I imagine she was thinking that people needed help.”

  Mazelle tipped her chin up, and clicked her tongue against her teeth again. “Don’t imagine you can blame that Lane girl for not knowing any better. That family is all so backward, and it’s no wonder, given the way their daddy is. Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he never came back. Do you know, just the other day he and that Shad Bell came into my store drunker than Cooter Brown and darned near picked a fight with some poor truck driver who was just trying to get gas. They …”

  Behind us, the doctor let out a long breath, so that Mazelle noticed he was there.

  I realized I’d got myself interested in the gossip about Jenilee’s daddy, and I felt a pinch of shame, because I knew in the past I would of joined right in.

  Mazelle shifted on the step beside me, holding up her tray. “Oh, Doctor. I didn’t notice you were there. Would you care for a candy bar or some cheese crackers? I salvaged these things from my store, thinking folks might be tired of chili and oatmeal.” The doctor didn’t reply, just glanced at her, gave a quick sideways jerk of his chin in answer, and then folded his arms across his chest, looking at the tent village below.

  Mazelle went on talking to him. “I was just telling Eudora how horrible it is about the Anderson baby. Blown right out of her crib by the tornado and just two weeks old, and no sign of her yet, and her mother looking everywhere around town, completely out of her mind with grief. It’s made me ill worrying about her and the baby and the poor father. I’ve been crying and crying all day long.”

  The doctor didn’t answer and neither did I. A flicker of emotion crossed his face; then he closed his eyes tight and jerked his head quickly back and forth, shaking it off.

  “… heard there were six children missing from a day care in Shale City,” Mazelle was droning on, sounding like one of those terrible talk show hosts on TV. “The police said they might never be found, I heard. Can you imagine that? That a person could just be swept up in a tornado and never be seen again? That a family could lose their children? Just in the blinking of an eye? Gone?”

  Without saying a word, Dr. Albright turned on his heel and walked down the steps, and along the side of the building, disappearing around the corner like he couldn’t take one more word of Mazelle’s mean-spirited prattling.

  “Well!” Mazelle made an offended cough in her throat. “He’s an odd sort.”

  “He ain’t the only one,” I muttered, and walked off, too.

  I heard Mazelle huff and mutter something, but I didn’t turn around and say I was sorry. On any normal day, I would of put up with her and done my best to be cordial because we were in the garden club and the ladies’ Bible class and various other groups together. None of that seemed to matter now.

  I’m not sure why I walked around the corner of the armory after Dr. Albright. I didn’t want him to think I was like Mazelle, though oftentimes in the past I had showed a pretty wicked tongue myself.

  Olney used to tell me that once I latched on to an opinion, I held on like I was Moses and it come straight from a burning bush. It wasn’t a good way to be, and it wasn’t only them Lane kids that had been damaged by my gossiping. I had done damage to myself. All that mean-spiritedness took a lot of the laughter out of me over the years. I had pretty much let myself become a mean old lady.

  I slowed my steps as I reached the corner, wondering if the doctor might be just around the edge of the wall, and if he might not appreciate me following him. I took one last, careful step, cleared the corner, and just stood there staring.

  There, squatted down in the long grass by the wall, was the doctor, his head in his hands, his shoulders round and trembling.

  I stood still for a long moment, trying to decide whether to say something or just slip away. I wondered what had brought him to that point, crouched alone in the grass with his head in his hands.

  Not a sound came from him, not a word or a sigh or a sob, just the quaking across his shoulders that said he was feeling something powerful.

  He looked for all the world like a broken man.

  I waited to see if he would notice I was there and look at me. Finally I stepped back around the corner and left him to himself. I didn’t figure I’d know what to say to him, anyway.

  Mazelle was gone from the step and headed toward the camp down the hill. Parked next to her sedan was Janet’s car. The front seat was empty, the passenger-side door hanging open, and the seat belt bell chiming.

  I scratched my head, climbing the steps to the armory. My eyes took a minute to adjust to the dim light inside. Jenilee was on her knees in the light from the door, her bag of pictures spilled out on the floor. She didn’t even notice I was there, she was so busy turning the pictures right side up and laying them on the floor.

  What in the world is she up to?

  A small sound from nearby stopped me before I could ask the question.

  I heard Lacy before I saw her. The softest whisper, just a little coo like baby kittens make.

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  I turned my head and saw her there beside June’s bed. The old coot was propped up on his pillow, his blue eyes fixed on Lacy, who was watching his hands intently. Wrapped around those old hands was a loop of red string, and he was showing her how to make a cat’s cradle.

  How in the world can that be? I thought. How could drunk, dirty old June Jaans be sitting there showing my granddaughter how to make a cat’s cradle, and how could it be that Lacy, who hadn’t said a word to me in two days, was talking to him?

  “Oh,” she whispered again as he moved his hands and changed the string.

  “Sure enough like magic, ain’t it?” June smiled at her. “See here, this middle part looks like a little kitty’s ears.”

  Lacy nodded.

  “Sure does, doesn’t it?” June smiled, his teeth surprisingly even and white. I remembered that smile. I remembered a young fella who used to smile like that when he got a home run for our school baseball team.

  “Now, look at this. Watch this.” I didn’t hear June’s voice. I heard the boy’s, saw him smile underneath a mop of sandy blond hair. “Looks like a cup and saucer now, see?”

  “Oh.” Lacy’s voice wasn’t much more than a breath sprinkled with sound.

  “Would you like to learn how to do that?” June smiled at her again, and that long-ago time and place come flooding back to me. I remembered that young blond-headed June Jaans doing parlor tricks in the hall at school, making a little primrose appear out of nowhere, handing it to me, and saying, It’s just a little trick. Would you like to learn how?

  I remembered shaking my head and stepping back, thinking that maybe he was doing some sort of sinful thing. He was new to our school, moved in with his family from New Orleans, where folks said his mama used to sing jazz in nightclubs. They didn’t go to church, and nobody in town was sure what to think.

  “Here, lean close now and put this string on your fingers like this,” he said to Lacy. Here, hold your hand out, now you put the flower here like this, I remembered. I remembered him touching my hand, talking to me in that strange, foreign-sounding way of his, the words slow, drawn out, with just a dash of his mama’s French accent and a strange rhythm that sounded like the blues music that made people dance in heathen ways I had only heard about.

  “See now, move your hand this way,” he said to Lacy, cupping his hands around her small fingers and helping her twist the thread into a basket. “Now spread your fingers out like this. There, that’s it, and the thread goes this way, and that way. See? Like weaving a blanket.”

  Lacy looked at him, a spark in her eyes.

  June nodded, tipping his head to look at her face, hidden under a shield of dark hair. “There, now, see you got a little bit of a smile under there, after all.”

  I remembered him saying that to my sist
er, Ivy. Little Ivy, who looked so much like Lacy, they could have been twins. Ivy Grace. So plain and shy with her dark hair and big gray eyes always looking up so that there was a rim of white around the bottom. She moved through the world quietly, soft like a shadow, so that most people never really noticed she was there.

  I always wondered why June Jaans noticed her—why from that first day he come to our school, he picked Ivy out of the crowd. I wondered why he come around and teased her with those little tricks of his, and said things like, Well, look at that, Ivy’s got a smile in there after all. A real pretty smile, and a nickel behind her ear. Now will ya look at that… .

  Maybe I was jealous. I suppose I was. But I was also worried for Ivy. June Jaans was popular with the girls. He had a smooth way of talking and a million parlor tricks up his sleeve. I couldn’t figure why he paid attention to Ivy, or why, when he finally asked me to a social, he said we ought to take Ivy along too. I figured he felt sorry for her, so I asked Mama to let her come along.

  I never figured anything bad would come of it… .

  “See, now you got a little magic of your own.” June’s voice was soft. I looked at him, and it was more than I could bear, seeing him with my Lacy, who looked so much like my sister all those years ago.

  A sick feeling started in my belly and gurgled hot and sour into my throat. I walked to the bed and took Lacy’s arm, getting her to her feet. I glared at June with fire in my eye. “Where is Janet?” I heard the words spit from my mouth like venom. “How in the world could she leave this child here alone like this?”

  June opened his mouth mutely, like he didn’t understand what I’d said.

  Lacy slumped against me, the string dangling from her hand, all the life gone out of her. Finally she opened her fingers, and the string fell to the bed, a little pool of red against the white sheet.

  “Don’t … don’t know,” June stammered out finally. “The little girl just wandered in here by herself. I didn’t know who she belonged to.”

  “Well, she belongs to me,” I said, wishing I would have told him that about Ivy all those years ago. You can’t have her. She belongs to me. Leave her alone before something bad happens.

  “One of your grandchildren?” I heard him ask.

  “Cass’s daughter,” I bit out. I wondered how he could look at her and not notice how much she looked like Ivy. Maybe he’d forgotten all about Ivy, but I hadn’t. That long-ago summer still festered in me like an old sore waiting to be scratched open.

  He moved his hands back to his chest and pulled his blanket higher, giving me a surprised, hurt look.

  I felt guilty, even though I didn’t want to. “She’s had a hard time lately. I better go find Janet and get Lacy home. She needs rest and quiet.”

  June breathed a long, slow sigh, a sad sound, like a groaning from somewhere deep inside him. Reaching up, he put the red string in Lacy’s hands. “Here, sweetness, you take this with you. You practice cup and saucer, and sometime later I’ll show you how to go all the way on and make cat’s cradle.”

  Lacy didn’t reply, just turned toward the door.

  “We got string at home,” I heard myself say. I took Lacy’s hand and led her out of there without taking a look back at June, or saying a word to Jenilee, who was sitting on the floor looking at me with her mouth hanging open.

  Janet was coming up the hill outside as I walked Lacy down the steps. She crossed the parking lot quickly, her arms swinging stiffly at her sides. I could tell before she got to us that she was mad.

  “What in the world are you doing taking Lacy in there?” she snapped.

  I gritted my teeth. It’s a good thing about old age that your temper gets as dull as all the rest of your wits. Ofttimes, it forgets to wake up, when in the past it would of come claws-out like a wet cat. “I found her inside, sitting there playing cat’s cradle with old June Jaans, of all people.”

  “Oh, good Lord,” Janet muttered. “I left her in the car.” Leaning down, she took Lacy’s face gently in her hands. Lacy looked right through her. “Lacy, honey, I told you to stay in the car. You can’t wander off like that. Next time you better stay home with the other kids, all right? It’ll be best that way.”

  Lacy stared off across the field.

  Janet closed her eyes and pulled her eyebrows together in the middle. She blinked hard and stood up, turning away from Lacy and wiping her eyes.

  “Mama, I really want you to come on home, now that you’re finished helping with breakfast here, all right? You’re trying to do too much,” she said, her back turned toward me and Lacy, and her arms wrapped around herself. “Weldon will be here. He promised if we were needed here, he’d get word to us.”

  “All right. All of a sudden I feel like the life’s gone out of me, anyway. Guess it’s all catching up with me.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go home and have a little rest, then go down to the creek where it’s quiet. It would be good to sit down there, don’t you think?”

  Janet nodded, sniffing as she turned toward the car and my hand fell away from her. “Um-hmm. It would.”

  “Lacy, you can dangle your feet in the water. It’ll feel good,” I said, but Lacy didn’t answer.

  Janet opened the car door, helped Lacy in, then buckled her seat belt like she was a baby. I opened my door and climbed in, my joints creaking like old hinges as I pulled my legs around.

  I laid my head against the seat, watching Lacy in the side mirror as we pulled away. “Sometimes a little quiet is what a soul needs,” I whispered as my eyes closed.

  In the darkness of my mind, I saw Ivy’s angel, her face a mirror of Lacy’s. She was trying to talk to me again, but just like with Lacy, I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  CHAPTER 10

  JENILEE

  Around me, people sat up in their bunks, or stood and came over to watch as I taped pictures to the wall.

  “Oh!” a woman said behind me. “Oh, goodness, that’s my wedding picture.” I turned to see the school librarian reaching for the picture in my hand. She stopped and picked up one from the floor. “And here’s the day we brought my son Kyle home from the hospital. That’s my granddad holding him. I thought for sure this picture was lost for good.” She cupped her fingers around mine for a moment, then slowly took the picture, looking at it through tear-filled eyes. “You don’t know what this means to me. This was the last picture we ever took of Granddad. It was such a happy day. Thank you for bringing it back. The picture, I mean.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I turned back to the photographs, taping them carefully to the wall, bringing back a time and a world that right now seemed lost, a Kodacolor dream that had evaporated, leaving behind only gray reality. The pictures were evidence of the lives we had come from, and to which we would someday return.

  As people came closer, surveying the pictures, I taped up the last photograph—the newborn baby girl with the cloudy blue eyes.

  Only the old letter remained on the floor where the pile of pictures had been. Unfolding it, I stared at it for a moment, thinking that it didn’t belong on the wall, that it was meant to be private, shared only between two people, two lovers of long ago.

  Finally I taped it to the wall with all of the others, wondering if those lovers would ever find it there. I imagined where they might be as I read the last words of the letter.

  You are not lost or cold or hungry. You are in my arms, and I in yours. We can never be far from one another.

  Close your eyes, love.

  Imagine.

  You are home.

  When I turned around, Drew was standing in the doorway, as if the words had brought him there.

  I stared at him for a long moment, afraid to believe. He looked different, older, more like my father, with his dark hair and eyes, and the high cheekbones that made his face look stern. He was wearing a National Guard uniform.

  I took a step forward, afraid he would disappear like a mirage. “Drew?” I whispered.

&n
bsp; He nodded, and suddenly I realized he was real. He was here. He stretched out his arms, and I knew he was going to say what I had hoped for him to say all those years ago when he left. Don’t worry about a thing, Jenilee. I’ll take care of everything.

  I no longer needed for him to say it. I didn’t need to be rescued.

  The idea of it stopped me where I stood. I didn’t want to be dragged back to the place I had been six years ago, six months ago, two days ago. I didn’t want that world to return.

  Drew turned his hands palms up, then lowered them to his sides, disappointed by my reaction. “It’s me.”

  I stood close enough to touch him, but I didn’t close the last inches between us. I wasn’t sure why. For four years I had been hoping he would come back. Now he had, and I didn’t know what to say. “I know it’s you,” I said. “Are you all right? I was … umm … worried about you.”

  He nodded, wiping the back of his sleeve across his forehead. “My guard reserve unit was called up to help with rescue efforts right after the tornado. I couldn’t get here until this morning when a relief unit came to take over our sector. I went out to the house, and it was empty. I looked all around the sheds, the fields, the neighbors’ places. I couldn’t figure out where you might be. Finally I came into town and started asking around. I heard you were helping the doctors here at the armory. I heard you saved old lady Gibson’s life.”

  I looked away from him, embarrassed to hear it described that way. “I pulled her out of the cellar. Everyone made a bigger deal of it than it was.”

  “That’s not how people around town tell it. They say you were a regular hero—saved her and her granddaughter and helped the doctor here yesterday when things were pretty bad.”

  I started to tell him I was only here because I couldn’t stand the silence at home, because I was afraid to be there alone any longer, but then I didn’t say it. Drew was finally looking at me with something other than pity and guilt, and it felt good.