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.
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.
“Mrs. Gibson’s a nice lady.” I wanted to turn the subject away from me. “She’s been up here taking care of people and making sure all the food got handed out, even though her home place is wrecked. Not everybody would do that.”
Drew nodded. It probably wasn’t coincidental that he thought of Daddy at that point. “I talked to the hospital before I left for Poetry this morning. The doctors took Daddy in for surgery again. Nate’s doing better today, though. They think he ought to be ready to leave as soon as they get his leg in a cast.”
I took in a quick breath of air, and the room seemed to spin around me. “You’ve seen Daddy and Nate?” I gasped, trying to process what he had said. “Are they all right? Where are they?”
He frowned, looking confused. “You mean you didn’t know? The hospital didn’t get in touch with you?”
“No.” Did he have any idea what the last two days had been like in Poetry? “We haven’t had much communication here. Mostly it’s emergency only.” Reaching out, I touched his arm, trying to connect, through him, to Nate. “How’s Nate? Is he all right? What happened?” I realized how it sounded, and quickly added, “Is Daddy all right?”
Drew took a deep breath and hesitated.
A veil of tears crowded my eyes. I could tell he was going to say things that would be hard to hear. “Drew, tell me.” I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to say. How did I want things to be after this moment? So many needs and desires, strengths and weaknesses were at war inside me.
Drew grabbed my shoulders, not tenderly but roughly. “Daddy’s pretty busted up.” His raven eyes searched mine, as if he needed to know what I was thinking. “They were in the truck on Highway Seventy-one almost to the Hindsville exit when the tornado came through. It rolled the truck several times and broke the trailer free, then threw the truck off an embankment. It was a bad crash. The highway patrol said they were lucky to be alive. They’ve been taken south to the hospital in Springfield because all the hospitals up north toward Kansas City are full and some of them have tornado damage, also.”
“Nate’s all right?” I heard myself whisper.
“Nate’s darned lucky. It could have been a lot worse. He’s shattered some bones in his leg, and they had to put a plate in there to hold them together. He asked about you.”
I pictured Nate in a hospital bed somewhere, smiling beneath that mop of blond hair, asking about me. A warm feeling washed through me. “I knew Nate was all right. I saw him in a dream the night after the tornado.” I saw you too, Drew. But I couldn’t make myself say it. So many old resentments were at battle inside me. I didn’t want him to know how glad I was that he’d come home.
Drew smiled a little, not a real smile like Nate’s. Drew never smiled like that. There was a closed, apprehensive look behind Drew’s smiles. He never smiled with his eyes.
“What did the doctors say about Daddy?” I was almost afraid to ask. There was a load of worry and guilt and fear wrapped in the question, and Drew knew it. Blood throbbed in my ears as I waited for him to answer. The rushing grew louder and louder, as if my body wanted to drown out whatever Drew had to say.
“Daddy’s in bad shape.” He looked at the floor to hide the thoughts behind his dark eyes. “He’s bleeding inside. They did surgery yesterday to try to stop the bleeding, but so far they haven’t gotten it under control. They took him in again this morning. He was conscious for a little while, but not since then. He’s been on oxygen and they’ve been giving him blood transfusions. They say he lost a lot of blood before he and Nate were found. They said he would have been dead if Nate hadn’t finally dragged himself out of the pickup and gone for help. The truck was half-buried in some debris down in a creek bottom, and they could have stayed there for days. Nate tore his leg up good trying to get it loose from under the seat.”
I shivered, imagining Nate leaving Daddy behind, breaking free, crawling away to get help, to save Daddy’s life. A flush of shame went through me, hot and bitter, because some part of me had been enjoying the freedom from Daddy and all his craziness these last few days. What kind of a person would think such things?
Drew’s arms went around me, strong and solid and warm. I leaned into him, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
“I know,” he whispered, and I had a feeling he understood. I knew he was just as confused, and lost, and afraid of the world as I was.
I couldn’t remember Drew ever putting his arms around me like that before, or speaking with his voice strangled by emotion. Drew was always loud and solid, a little threatening. He was an island with no approachable harbor.
I wrapped my arms around him and hung on because I didn’t know what else to do. The world was spinning again. We were powerless to stop it, with no way of knowing where we would land.
“I want to see Nate,” I choked out, needing to be with Nate, to touch him, to hold his hand the way I used to when he had the flu or the chicken pox. Even though he was sixteen, he still got lonely and scared when he was sick.
He must be scared right now.
Drew released me and I stepped back. “Drew, can you take me there?” I stood there, afraid he would say no, afraid he would walk away from Nate and me again. “I . . . I don’t have a car or anything.”
Drew ran his thumb and forefinger wearily along the crest of his dark brows. “We can try. Just don’t get your hopes up, all right? A lot of roads are flooded, and the guard may have closed some of the bridges I took. It was pretty hairy getting here.”
I nodded, unable to push words past the lump in my throat. Nate’s all right, was all I could think. Nate’s all right, and you’re here, Drew. Tears crowded my eyes, and I turned away, so Drew wouldn’t see how much I needed him.
On his cot nearby, Mr. Jaans held his hand out to me, and I moved forward until my fingers touched his.
“You just remember you done a good thing today. This day. Right now.” I didn’t know if he was talking about the pictures on the wall, or about Drew and me. “It don’t do any good to dwell on whatever come before. A bad past is like gristle. You can chew on it forever and starve yourself to death, or you can spit it out and see what else is on the table. You just go on from here, Jenilee, and you’ll be all right.”
I nodded, but all I could say was, “When I get back home, I’ll look after your cows.”
“Tell my cows I’m comin’ home soon.” He gave my hand a squeeze, then let his fingers fall away. “Keep an eye out for my bull, too, all right? The sheriff come in a while ago and said Charlie got away from them again. Keep an eye out for him, will ya? He don’t mean to hurt anybody.”
“I will.”
“Sure hope that bull makes it home. My wife and I raised that little cuss on a bottle just before she passed on. . . .” He trailed off, then relaxed against the pillow and closed his eyes. “I told Tom he better not let them trigger-happy deputies shoot my bull.”
“I’m sure he’ll show up at home,” I said. “He always does.”
Mr. Jaans let out a long sigh. “Ya know, I think I’d just as soon lose the house as lose that old bull. Don’t know what I’d do without him showing up at my window bellering in the mornings.” His lips curved upward with the thought. “Guess that goes to show it’s the small things you miss. It’s not houses, or cars, or furniture that ya want back. It’s the way someone smiled or the sound of a voice, or a silly old bull bellering at the window.”
Drew came back to the doorway, and I turned to follow him out, looking at the wall of pictures as I walked away.
Drew followed my gaze. “Who put those up there?”
“I did,” I said. “I wanted people to be able to find them.”
“It’s a good idea.”
“I’m going to gather all that I can and bring them here.” The idea lit in me like a flame in a dark room.
“It’s a good idea,” he repeated.
Dr. Albright was coming in the doorway as we were going out. He was dirty and blood-spattered, red-eyed, wrinkled, and tired now like the rest of us. He looked sad.
He stepped back so that we could pass through the door, and he regarded me with something strangely like admiration. “The pictures are a good idea.” The slightest smile creased his lips. “Sometimes small things like that help patients as much as the medical care does.”
“Thanks.” I met his gaze for a moment, wondering if he really meant it, wondering why he would care about someone like me. “I’m going to bring more when I can. It’s like getting a little bit of our lives back.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to explain to him. Maybe I was afraid he would tell me I couldn’t clutter up his hospital.
He nodded, glancing at Drew, as if he suddenly realized I was leaving. “Do you have a place to stay? There’s room here in the armory, or in the tents.”
His kindness made me stammer. Why did he seem different all of a sudden? “M-my brother’s here. We’re going to the hospital in Springfield. My father and my younger brother are there. They were caught in their truck during the tornado.”
Dr. Albright met my gaze with a thoughtful look I didn’t understand, as if he had something more he wanted to say. Instead he said, “Take care,” stiffened his shoulders, and walked past me, rubbing the back of his neck.
I followed Drew to his pickup at the edge of the parking lot and climbed in the passenger side as Drew turned the key and the engine roared to life, shutting out the sounds of the campground below.
We headed out of town, passing what was left of the convenience store and the Dairy Queen, then driving slowly past neighborhoods where little remained but piles of boards and overturned appliances. People were sifting through the rubble now, picking up bits of clothing and personal mementos. Not much remained.
It’s the small things you miss.
Looking at Drew, I thought about all the small things I had forgotten about him. He was the one who made me do my homework when Mama was too tired to care, and stuck up for me when Daddy got mean, and did my chores when I forgot, so I wouldn’t get punished. He made sure nobody at school made fun of my clothes. He woke me up in the mornings and fixed oatmeal and irritably told me to eat it before the bus came.
Drew had been my protector. He had been a rock because the rest of us needed him to be. He was a mother and father, protector to Nate and me when Drew was no more than a child himself. He had done a million little things right, and one big thing wrong. He saw a way out, and he took it.
For me, that one big thing had eclipsed all the rest. Now I realized how much the rest had mattered. Drew was the reason we had survived at all. He took care of the place when Daddy was off hunting or drinking. He cooked the meals when Mama was too sick or tired or lost in her own sadness to do it. He was the one who finally stood up to Daddy and said, “You’re not taking that belt to anybody else in this family again. I swear to God, if you do, I’ll go to the sheriff and I’ll tell him everything.”
I was ten, and I wondered what everything meant. I crouched by the sofa near Nate, frozen, my heart hammering like a caged bird in my chest as I watched this clash of Titans in our living room. Drew was seventeen then, a lineman on the football team, and he made even Daddy look small.
Daddy looked Drew in the eye for a minute, staggered a step backward as if Drew had hit him, then turned and left. Drew waited until he was gone, then moved to the couch and sat down with his head in his hands.
I watched him, amazed at what he had done, afraid we would pay for it later.
“You hadn’t oughta done that,” Nate said, which was interesting considering that Nate was the one about to get a whipping. Nate took a lot of whippings. He was stubborn, and he didn’t seem to ever learn. “Now he’ll be ticked off.”
Drew didn’t look up, just combed his fingers roughly into his dark hair and sat there, hunched over, his forearms pressed against his ears as if he didn’t want to hear anything. “I’m sick of his crap. He isn’t gonna do that anymore.”
Nate shrugged, then stood up and headed for the door. “Heck, it don’t hurt.”
“I’m not takin’ any more of his crap.” Drew’s fingers trembled where he held his hair, the muscles in his arms twitching in steely coils. Staring at the floor, he repeated, “I’m not takin’ any more of his crap. This is the end of it.”
I don’t know if Mama ever knew what happened that day. She was at work, and by the time she came home, Daddy was gone and everything was like normal. None of us ever told her about the fight. We were too afraid to talk about it.
Daddy stayed gone for a week, and Mama was worried about that. In spite of all the ways he was bad, she loved Daddy. She couldn’t see much beyond that. She would have done anything, been anyone, to banish that part of him that drank too much, and got mean, and set off the house like a powder keg.
It wasn’t much of a way to live a life, but you can get used to anything.
Drew glanced at me from the driver’s seat, his dark brows lowered in concern. I realized I was crying again.
“You all right?”
“Yes.” I pulled the visor down and looked in the mirror, wiping my eyes. My face looked pale, tired, filthy—older than just a few days ago.
A picture fell from the top of the visor, and I picked it up, looking into the dark eyes of a little boy, perhaps four or five years old, and a little girl a year or so younger with long dark hair.
“Those are my kids,” Drew said. “That’s Alex on the left and Amber on the right. That picture’s six months or so old. Their mama’s supposed to send me a new one.”
“They don’t live with you?” I don’t know why that didn’t surprise me. It had always been hard for me to picture any of us married, or having kids, or raising families. It was as if the old images were forever burned into my mind, and I couldn’t see us as anything else or anything better.
Drew frowned, watching the road, his face stiff. “Naw. She moved back to a house near her folks a couple months ago. We been havin’ some problems, and she said she needed some time to think.”
“That’s too bad.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Did Mama know you got married and had kids?”
Drew sighed. “We’re not married. That’s one of the problems with Darla and me. She doesn’t like it that we’re not married.”
“How come you don’t just get married then?”
He thought about that for a minute, then sighed again. “Don’t know. I guess I’m worried that if we do, it’ll all turn bad. Guess it seems like I don’t know how to make a right life.”
I understood what he meant. I hadn’t thought about anything beyond getting by for the next two years until Nate was eighteen and out of school. Beyond that, I didn’t know what kind of a picture to paint. “Were things good when they were there with you? The family stuff, I mean?”
He squinted, thinking about it. “Yeah, I guess you’d have to say so. We had some problems—she talks too much, I don’t talk enough, Alex likes to climb on things, and Amber don’t want to poop in the pot. You know, that kind of thing.”
I chuckled. It was hard for me to imagine Drew worrying about a toddler’s potty habits. “Sounds pretty normal.”
Drew shrugged. “I guess. I never took a belt and knocked the crap out of my kid with it. I can tell you that.”
My heart skipped, and an old, sick, nervous feeling washed through me, as if I were remembering not the past, but the way the past felt. “You wouldn’t do that, Drew. You’re a good person.”
He tapped his thumbs rhythmically on the steering wheel. “But that’s the thing. I’m never quite sure. All that stuff’s inside me, and I always wonder if someday I’ll just lose it.”
“You never lost it before.” I thought of all the arguments in our house. “Even with everything that happened, you always kept it together.”
He shook his head, his chest deflating with a long, slow breath. “I’ve been closer than I want to be, Jenilee. I’ve been closer than you’ve ever seen.”
I swallowed hard, that familiar, fearful feeling churning in my stomach. The expression on Drew’s face was ominous, dangerous, angry. He looked like Daddy.
I reminded myself that he wasn’t Daddy, that Daddy was far away in a hospital bed.
Drew stared at the road ahead, his dark eyes burning a hole somewhere in the distance. “There’s a lot that you don’t know, Jenilee. Daddy came home from Vietnam really messed up, and he’s still messed up. There’s a lot that happened before you were old enough to remember it, and a lot that you just plain weren’t there to see. You don’t know the trouble there was between me and him before I left for the army.”
“I heard more than you think.” I heard everything. That old resentment crept into my mind. The one that said, If you thought things were that bad, why did you go away and leave Nate and me in the middle of it?
Drew sat shaking his head, and I had a feeling there really were things I didn’t know. When he spoke, his voice was low and emotionless. “I was ready to kill him. I really was. I’d have done it if it hadn’t been for Coach Ellis. He kept up with me that summer after I graduated, when I was just runnin’ the streets getting into trouble. He came to get me out of jail one night, and he signed for me. He took me out to the football field, and he turned on the lights, and we sat there on the bench. He told me sooner or later the fights and the stuff at home were going to land me in prison or dead. He looked me right in the eye and told me I had to get myself out of here. Then he took me to Shawnee the next day and I signed up for the army.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I never could get along with Daddy like you could. I figured that would get you by after I was gone. You always find a way to get along with people.”
Because there is no me. There has been only what other people tell me to be. “I just never had the guts to stand up for myself,” I said, disappointed in myself. “I never even thought about it until a few days ago.”
“Sometimes it’s best not to dwell on it too much.” He said it as if that would fix everything.
Just don’t dwell on it too much . . . Was that possible?
Drew’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered, looking surprised and worried. “Darla? Is everything all right with the kids? I can’t hear you very well . . . what?” He paused, bracing the phone on his shoulder and covering his other ear with his hand. “The connection’s really bad. What?” He paused, his brows drawing together in the center. “What do you mean, the hospital called you about Daddy?”
I heard the echo of a voice coming through the phone, the cadence hurried, seeming nervous, but I couldn’t understand the words.
“So he’s out of surgery now?” A pause, and then, “He’s stable now?”
I held my breath, watching Drew nod as he listened to the answer to the question. He was silent for a moment after the voice on the other end stopped; then he asked, “What are they doing calling you? How’d they get your phone number?”
He was silent, his jaw clenching; then he slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Why did you do that? I told you not to go down there.”
Words echoed through the phone again, hurried, the pitch higher.
Drew’s jaw clenched. When he answered, his voice was low, almost a growl. “Because it isn’t any of your business, Darla. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
The voice rose on the other end.
Drew’s answer echoed through the cab of the truck, ringing in my ears. “Yeah, you’re right about that. I can’t tell you anything.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just gritted his teeth and added, “Go home, Darla. I told you before, my family isn’t any of your business.” And he disconnected the phone, tossing it hard onto the floorboard of the truck.
I picked it up and set it on the seat, my fingers trembling, a black sense of the past churning inside me. Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I turned away from Drew, laid my head against the seat, and stared out the window, not knowing what to say.