Welcome to Last Chance

by Hope Ramsay

  The cop hung his coat and hat on a peg by the door and headed down the line of booths with the coiled grace of a big predator. The radio on his belt made a crackling noise, and his shoes, which looked shiny bright despite the rain outside, had a little squeak to them. He headed right for them.

  Fear blew through Jane. What if the thugs had killed Woody and his body had turned up someplace bearing incriminating evidence? What if Woody was into something illegal and not just a gambler with a bunch of sharks on his tail? Negative thoughts of being interrogated about her stupid liaison with Woody West danced right through her mind.

  She looked up at the cop and told herself to think happy thoughts, but there was something kind of dead in his green eyes that made all the positive energy inside her condense into a big knot right in her stomach.

  “Hey, Stony,” Betty said, as she arrived with Jane’s two-egg breakfast and the fiddler’s biscuits. Betty gave the policeman the same adoring look she had given Clayton P. earlier. The cop was just as immune.

  “Hey, Betty,” he said in a voice so deep it sounded like it came right out of the center of the earth.

  “The usual?” the waitress asked.

  “Nope. Just coffee, I’ve only got a minute. Route 70 is washed out down over to Sweden, and the county needs backup to set up a roadblock. Make it to go, would you, darlin’?”

  Betty bustled back to the kitchen, and the cop turned toward Jane. He put his hands on his utility belt and studied her for almost ten seconds without blinking.

  Ten seconds is a long time to endure a stare like that. She couldn’t look away, so she forced herself to look up into his granite face while she recited the mantra she used every night right before she dropped off to sleep. The mantra was supposed to clear her mind and make it possible for her to manifest self-confidence and positive energy in her life.

  “Hey, didn’t Momma ever tell you it’s not polite to stare,” Clayton P. said as he scooted his butt toward the wall, making room on the bench beside him. “Take a load off, bro.”

  Bro?

  The big cop dropped down onto the seat beside Clayton P., and that’s when Jane saw the shiny nameplate above his right breast pocket. It said S. Rhodes.

  Hoo boy. Unless she’d missed something, the term of endearment coupled with that surname on the cop’s chest meant he was Clayton P. Rhodes’s brother.

  This was not a positive sign.

  Clayton P. wasn’t nearly the bad boy she had, at first, taken him for. He had a relationship with the local law, which meant he wasn’t in trouble with it. More to the point, Clayton P. could turn her in for attempted robbery and get the local law’s full attention without too many questions asked.

  “Meet Wanda Jane Coblentz,” Clayton P. said. “She’s originally from West Virginia, and she’s just passing through.” He gave her a knowing smile, and his silver eyes sparkled with what looked like real amusement.

  Oh great, Clayton P. had just handed the cop her entire life story. She hadn’t been Wanda Jane Coblentz from West Virginia in more than seven years. And with good reason, too.

  She smiled at the cop. He didn’t react.

  “Stony is my brother. He’s the chief of police,” Clayton P. said.

  Stony Rhodes? Wow, the world had gotten wacky in the last twenty-four hours. She could not be dealing with a couple of guys whose names were Stony and Clay, could she? They probably had another brother stashed somewhere named Dusty.

  “Saw your van down at the Peach Blossom last night,” Stony Rhodes drawled. “And if I saw it, you can bet your bottom dollar Lillian Bray saw it, which means Momma will know about it before the morning is finished.”

  Clayton P.’s ears got red again, but he said not one word. Instead, he dove into a biscuit.

  The cop looked back up at her. “How old are you, darlin’?” he asked.

  Clayton P. nearly jumped out of his seat. “Old enough,” he said under his breath.

  “Uh-huh,” the cop said, and that little grunt conveyed a world of censure. Compared to his older brother, Clayton P. didn’t look like a Boy Scout at all. It kind of added to his allure, somehow, which was a development Jane found disturbing.

  Betty came back with a large Styrofoam cup of coffee. “It’s on the house,” she said, handing it off to Stony.

  Stony nodded as he stood. He turned to look down at his brother. “I was out to the golf course a little while ago. I’m a little worried about Jesus.”

  “Daddy and I tied him down yesterday. He should be okay.”

  Jane almost choked on her bacon. “You tied down Jesus?” she asked, looking from one to the other of them. “Pardon me, but what, pray tell, was He doing on a golf course? And please do not tell me some old joke about how He was golfing with God.”

  Stony chuckled, and something changed in his eyes. For a fleeting instant, she could have sworn the chief of police was made of flesh and blood.

  He turned toward Clayton P., who was not laughing. “This one’s got a sense of humor, doesn’t she?” he said as if she weren’t sitting there.

  Clayton looked up from his biscuits. “It’s a statue of Jesus—twenty feet tall.”

  “On a golf course?”

  Clayton P. squeezed his eyes shut and started to massage his temples with his index fingers, like this entire conversation had given him an Excedrin headache.

  “It’s a minigolf course,” Stony said.

  Clay dropped his hands to the tabletop. “You know what?” he said in a hoarse voice that conveyed pain, anger, and something else Jane couldn’t quite figure out. “I hope it rains so hard today that the ark floats away, Moses drowns, and the whale and Jonah find their way back to the sea.”

  Jane picked up another slice of bacon and crunched. “There’s an ark, too?” she said around the food.

  “Life-sized,” Stony said. “Golfing for God is our one-and-only tourist attraction.”

  “Golfing for God?” she asked, looking from one to the other of them.

  “As opposed to golfing with Him,” Clayton P. said. “And it’s not a tourist attraction. It’s the local embarrassment. Unfortunately, our daddy is the proprietor.”

  The chief gave a little snort. “Amen to that.”

  “So you have to go, huh?” Clayton asked, changing the subject.

  “There’s a washout on Route 70. There’ll be more before the day’s out.”

  “Let me know if y’all need help. I’ll be down at the store,” Clayton P. said.

  “Probably do a brisk business in batteries and generators once the wind dies down. Will you keep an eye on Momma and the kids?”

  Clayton P. nodded. The cop turned and looked down at her. “Wanda Jane, huh?”

  “Jane for short.”

  “You come in last night on the nine-thirty bus from Atlanta?”

  She nodded. How did he know that?

  He nodded soberly. “Hope you don’t intend on doing any damage before you leave.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shrugged. “I reckon when a woman with the same name as a hurricane blows into town and maneuvers Clay to the Peach Blossom Motor Court within hours of her arrival, it’s a sure sign of trouble.” He leaned in. “And I don’t like trouble in my town.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and headed toward the door.

  Once he’d left, Jane turned toward Clayton P. “So that was your idea of reforming me, huh?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “Is the hurricane really named Jane?”

  “Where have you been the last couple of days?”

  “On a bus from Georgia. For the record, though, I think Jane is a stupid name for a hurricane.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She shrugged. “A hurricane should be named something exotic like Chantal or Jezebel. Jane is plain. No one takes a Jane seriously. And not taking a hurricane seriously is probably a big mistake.”

  He looked up from his coffee mug, a strange light in his eyes. Unlike his b
rother’s, Clayton’s eyes were not dead. In fact, now that she studied them in the light of day, she could see they weren’t gray at all, but the palest shade of green with opalescent flecks in them. Iridescent fire burned in those flecks. That spark of fire had lured her into his arms last night.

  Her gaze dropped down to his mouth and got stuck there. She flashed on the memory of his kisses, and she wished for an Alzheimer’s moment. Unfortunately, her memory was good and deadly accurate.

  “I don’t know,” he said in his blurred drawl. “I wouldn’t exactly call you plain.”

  She dropped her gaze to her half-eaten breakfast. She had been a plain Jane once. She had run away from that awkward and confused girl. In many ways, she was still running.

  Clayton P. chuckled, and she glanced up. “Maybe the storm being named Jane is a sign,” he said.

  “You think?”

  His eyes darkened a little, and he looked down at his plate, filled now with crumbs. “You certainly blew into Dottie’s last night like a force of nature. I’ll give you that.” He pressed his index finger onto one of the crumbs and conveyed it to his mouth. Jane watched as his tongue darted out to take the crumb off his finger. Heat flashed through her.

  “So,” she said on a little puff of air. “Does this burg have a newspaper?”

  “Uh, no. Most folks read the Times and Democrat. It’s Orangeburg’s paper. Why?”

  “I need to check the help-wanted ads.” She smiled up at him as sweetly as she could, which was a good thing, because he suddenly looked like he was about to blow his stack.

  “Look, girl, will you wake up? We’re sitting on a flat piece of land that’s a few feet above sea level. Hurricane Jane may be a hundred miles away, but it’s supposed to drop something like fifteen inches of rain on us today. Before the day is out, we’ll lose power, half the roads will get washed out, and there will be trees down all over town. No one”—he leaned in—“is going to be conducting job interviews today.”

  She swallowed hard in the face of these dire projections. “You really are a glass-is-half-empty kind of person, aren’t you?”

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. “Well,” he said, opening his eyes again and speaking as if she were mentally slow or something. “I realize you like to think positively, but…” His voice rose in pitch. “A hurricane is a frigging natural disaster.”

  “My ma used to say there wasn’t any ill wind that didn’t blow some kind of good,” she rejoined. “Look on the bright side; maybe the hurricane will take out Golfing for God, although I’m having trouble understanding why you want that to happen. It sounds like Golfing for God is like a national treasure or an eighth wonder or something like that.”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Golfing for God is a running joke in this town. It’s the kind of place that makes people laugh at me and my kin. And that’s something they’ve been doing for generations.”

  “Generations?”

  “Yeah. My forebears once owned all the land around these parts. The land was part of a big plantation. My great-great-something granddaddy came back from the Civil War and proceeded to lose the farm in a poker game. The story is he left a suicide note penned to the Lord, asking for forgiveness and making a special request that the angels watch over his family, who he left destitute, I might add.

  “Anyway, my forebears have been eccentric ever since. My granddaddy built Golfing for God, and my own daddy runs it and claims to regularly converse with angels. Daddy would be heartbroke if Hurricane Jane took out Golfing for God, especially when Hurricane Hugo didn’t lay a glove on it.”

  “Your father talks to angels? Really? That’s kind of cool.”

  “No, it’s not. Thanks to Chancellor Rhodes’s ill-advised suicide note that invoked the heavenly host, there has always been at least one Rhodes in every generation who has gone off the deep end and talked with angels. It’s like a family curse. And me and my two brothers and sister are not going to end up like that if we can help it.”

  “You really believe this? I would have thought that a negative person such as yourself might—”

  “Yeah, I believe there is a strain of serious mental illness that runs in my family. I’m going to rise above it.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s a positive approach. But really, have you ever considered that Golfing for God was spared by Hurricane Hugo as a sign that the Universe approves of it? I think it’s pretty positive to have a pipeline to angels.”

  “Do you believe in angels? Really?”

  She shrugged. “I think metaphorically, being in touch with the forces of the Universe is way cool.”

  “You are insane. And so is my daddy. I am not going there.” He glanced down at her breakfast. “Are you done with that?” he said, clearly changing the subject.

  She looked down at her plate. She’d managed to pack away most of the meal, but not all of it. “Yeah. But I wonder if I could get a box. I have a feeling it might be a while before my next meal.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll feed you until the buses are running again. C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is where we part company.”

  Clayton P. blinked down at her. “You do realize this storm’s going to get worse before it gets better? You can’t stay here.”

  “Why not? It’s a free country.”

  He leaned in. “Because you have no money, no clothes, and no place to stay. Now, get up.”

  “I’m not budging. You can’t make me.”

  He grabbed Jane by the arm and hauled her to her feet with one powerful yank. His use of force sent fear radiating right through her. She tried to pull away, and he put his face right in hers. “You’re a brat, you know that? Someone needs to tan your backside.”

  “Lemme go,” she gasped. She didn’t need anyone tanning her backside. Pa had done enough of that when she was young. Every instinct in her body screamed that she needed to run—and run fast.

  She pulled against his grip, and he released her. She whirled away, racing for the door like a coon with a bloodhound on her tail. She didn’t think about the storm, or the poncho, or anything except getting away from him. A girl on her own needed to run when her instincts told her it was time. She hit the door and pushed through it. A wall of wind and water hit her with the force of… well… a hurricane.

  Her namesake smacked her upside the head with a fury designed, no doubt, to beat some sense into her addled brains. Hurricane Jane might have blown her all the way to Kingdom Come, too, if it hadn’t been for Clayton P., who materialized out of the wall of rain and wind and folded her up in a pair of strong and gentle arms.

  He was so enormous that he blocked the wind with his big body and seemed utterly immovable despite the forces buffeting him. “Are you all right?” The concerned look on his rain-drenched face chased away the sudden panic. It also did something to her insides—as if she had just taken a deep draught of something at least one hundred proof. Heat flowed from her belly to every one of her extremities. How could a really big guy who’d just scared her silly make that kind of heat inside her? It was not a hopeful sign. It was scary.

  But she nodded anyway, momentarily struck dumb by the strong and benign feel of his hands on her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said above the roar of wind and rain. The look of contrition on his face seemed genuine. He turned and pulled her with him up the street. As she walked beside him, clinging to his impressive arm, it occurred to her that either Clay Rhodes and the hurricane were in league and out to mess up her life, or the big man was just too darned stubborn to let tropical-storm-strength winds knock him around.

  Either way, she had gotten the message: The Universe and Hurricane Jane meant for her to go with him.

  CHAPTER 4

  Haley Rhodes sat in her small pink rocking chair in the corner of Granny’s kitchen. It was her favorite chair in the w
hole world. Granddaddy had painted it pink like she’d asked him to, and it was the only chair in the house that fit her just right.

  Most times, Granny kept Haley’s rocking chair out on the porch, but today it was raining hard on account of the hurricane, so Granny brought the chair into the kitchen. Priscilla, Granny’s kitty, had curled up on Haley’s lap while Haley listened to Granny talking on the telephone.

  “I am certain Clay didn’t take a floozy to the Peach Blossom Motor Court, Lillian. I raised my boy to be better than that,” Granny said. Granny’s voice sounded kind of flat—the way it got when Granny got mad about something. Miz Lillian Bray, who was on the other end of the line, taught Lizzy’s Sunday school class.

  Haley wasn’t sure why, but she knew that spending the night at the Peach Blossom Motor Court was wicked. She had heard Miz Bray talking about folks who had done it. Miz Bray said a good girl never wanted to see the insides of a place like that. Haley wasn’t sure what a floozy was, but that didn’t sound too good either.

  Prissy purred softly. Being a cat, Prissy didn’t care what Uncle Clay might have done, but the angel in the corner by the broom closet must have cared something fierce, ’cause she had stopped crying.

  Most times, the angel wasn’t happy. Instead of being up in Heaven and having wings, like the angels in Haley’s Sunday school book, this angel cried—sometimes real loud at night. Haley had named it the Sorrowful Angel. The Sorrowful Angel’s crying never woke up Daddy or Haley’s big sister, Lizzy, ’cause neither of them could hear her or see her.

  Once, Lizzy caught Haley trying to talk to the angel. Lizzy laughed at Haley so bad that Haley had cried as hard as the angel. Then Daddy got mad at Haley and made her go to bed without dessert.

  Anyways, ever since then, Haley was careful not ever to try to talk to the angel when grown-ups or Lizzy were around. The angel was Haley’s secret.

  “Lillian,” Granny said into the telephone, “you know good and well that Ike’s rheumatism is so bad he can’t play organ anymore. I doubt he wants to come out of retirement. I doubt that the members of the choir want him out of retirement either. Besides, even if Clay has slipped a little, whatever happened to the Christian notion of forgiveness?” Granny leaned against the wall and blew the hair off her forehead like she did when she was mad about something. Granny looked real mad right now. Mad and beautiful.