CHAPTER 13

JENILEE

 

 

Nate sat silently in the backseat as we wound through the maze of roads heading home. Drew waited until Nate had fallen asleep to say anything.

“Those nurses shouldn’t have taken him down to see Daddy,” he said. “It didn’t do him any good.”

“I’m sure they thought they were helping. They don’t know how Daddy can be.” Rolling down my window, I let the warm summer breeze stroke the side of my face, lifting the damp strands of hair from my neck.

“No, I guess they don’t.”

We fell silent, neither of us knowing what to say next. It didn’t seem right to say things against Daddy when he was lying near death in a hospital bed. No matter how bad he had been to us sometimes, there was still some part of us that cared about him.

I swallowed hard and asked the other question that had been on my mind all day. “Is that why you didn’t want Darla to be at the hospital? Because she doesn’t know how Daddy can be?”

Drew stared grimly ahead as we turned onto Good Hope Road. “That’s part of it.”

The tone of his voice said, Don’t ask anything more, but I did anyway. “Does she know anything about . . . us? About how things were, I mean.”

“I don’t know.” The muscles of his jaw twitched, and his eyes were hard and narrow.

I pressed on, in spite of the ominous undercurrent from him. I wasn’t sure why. “Didn’t you ever talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Well . . . didn’t you ever want to?”

“Leave it alone, Jenilee,” he bit out, whipping the truck into our driveway so fast that Nate jerked and woke up in the backseat. “There’s a whole lot to it you don’t understand. Just leave it alone.”

“Wh-what?” Nate muttered, groggy from painkillers.

“Nothing.” Drew opened his door and got out of the truck, done with the conversation. He jerked the back door open and reached in to help Nate down.

Nate shrugged away Drew’s hand. “I can get out myself.”

Drew grabbed him anyway. “No, you can’t. They said no crutches until tomorrow morning, and you’ve got to keep the leg propped up.” He hauled Nate out of the backseat like Nate was still the eight-year-old brother he’d left behind. “Come on, I’ll help you to bed.”

Nate moaned in his throat. “Owwww. I don’t think I’m gonna live that long.”

“Hang in there, Bubby,” Drew said as I slipped under Nate’s other arm, and together we helped him toward the house.

Bubby. Nate was in too much pain to notice the nickname. That was what Drew used to call him when he was little, back when Nate thought the sun rose and set at Drew’s feet. Bubby was a name from a world that didn’t exist anymore.

Drew didn’t even seem to realize he’d said it.

“Hang in there,” he said again, as we helped Nate up the porch steps.

“I’m all right,” Nate panted, his eyes clamped against the pain. “I’ll make it.” His head rolled backward, then sagged.

“Just a few more steps, Bubby.” Drew grimaced, as if he felt the pain, too. “See, there’s your room. We’re almost there. Hang in there with us.”

Nate’s head sagged against mine, the dampness of his tears wetting my hair. “It’s all right, Nate. We’re here. Look. Here’s your bed.”

We helped Nate onto the bed. He drew in a breath, coming back to life as we lifted the long cast and propped it up on a stack of blankets. Finally he laid his head back, closing his eyes, while tears streamed from beneath the fringe of his sandy brown lashes onto his suntanned skin.

“I’ll go out and get the medicine from the car,” Drew said as I covered Nate with a blanket.

“Sssshhhh,” I whispered, dabbing Nate’s cheeks. “We’ll get you another dose of pain medicine. That’ll help.”

Nate turned his face away from me and raised his arm, laying it across his eyes. “Tell him not to call me that again.” His voice trembled as he spoke.

I knew it wasn’t the pain that had made him cry.

I sat on the side of the bed, stroking my hand up and down his arm. “Ssshhhh,” I whispered. “Ssshhhh.”

Drew came back with a pain pill and a glass of water. Nate was almost asleep, but he sat up and took the medicine, then lay back and closed his eyes. I stayed with him, my hand on his chest as his breaths grew long and slow. Drew waited in the doorway.

Finally I stood up and walked out of the room with Drew. He crossed the living room and went out the door to the front porch, as if he couldn’t stand to be in that house. I stood uncertainly by the sofa, old feelings dripping over me like thick black ink. I understood why, once he had broken free, Drew didn’t want to come back to this place.

I followed him onto the porch.

He didn’t turn around, just stood with his hands braced on the railing, looking past Mama’s oleander bush, toward the hay fields. “Looks like the electric is still out, but there’s plenty of water in the storage tank, so it ought to feed into the house all right. Go ahead in and get something to eat and a shower, if you want to. I’ll go out and feed Daddy’s cows.”

I wondered why he wanted to get away from me. “I promised old man Jaans I’d feed his cows and look for that old white bull of his,” I said. “He’s been running loose again, getting into trouble ever since the storm.”

“I’ll go on down there and take a look around, then come back through our pasture and feed Daddy’s cattle. I’ll be back after a while.” He pushed off the porch rail and hurried down the steps and across the lawn, without looking back.

Just like before. A note of panic went through me. Just like the last time he left.

I walked to the yard fence and closed the gate behind him as he climbed into his truck. Even though I knew he was coming back, deep within me was the fear that he would leave Good Hope Road behind again.

My hand touched a piece of paper tangled in the rusty wire of the gate. I pulled it free and stood looking at it. The handwriting was different, not lacy and feminine like that of the first letter, but the paper was familiar, old, yellowed by time.

It felt crisp and brittle in my hands as I unfolded it and read the words, whispering them into the silent air.

My Dearest,

 

Today, as we prepare for the fiftieth anniversary of the day we wed, I have read again a letter you wrote long ago. The words took me back to that time when there was so much pain, and anger, and sadness in me. You wrote to me that day and told me your love would never leave me, that love can travel on the wind. I doubt if I told you then, or since, or could ever tell you what that letter meant to me. Oh, I know I have left these little love notes almost daily, but I have never said the things that are deepest in my heart. Perhaps I cannot still, so I will leave this note in the trunk with my old uniform, where you will find it someday when I am gone.

When you read this, know that your love sustained me through the darkest hours of my life. You were the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins. Without you I would have surely bled until I died. You led me forward, a single step in faith, and then another, and another, until I had walked far from the shadows of the past. Had I not suffered the loss of everything I thought would matter, I would have missed everything that truly mattered in my life.

I am, my darling, so thankful for the many happy days we have shared together, but looking back, I am thankful also for the dark ones. These were the times when I understood the strength of faith and love, when this was all we had to cling to, and it was enough. Faith is a stalwart ship, carrying us through the gale, not destroyed by the ocean, but strengthened by it. Even the fiercest of life’s trials are no match for her sails. Trials pass like a storm. The day rises anew, and we rise with the day.

We have been truly and richly blessed.

The letter ended there, as if he had never finished it, or didn’t know how to, or didn’t want to. Had he left it for her? Had she found it, or had it been waiting hidden somewhere when the tornado came, and she wasn’t supposed to find it yet?

I read the letter again, whispering the words into the still afternoon air. You led me forward, a single step in faith, and then another, and another, until I had walked far from the shadows of the past. Was it possible to walk, one step at a time, away from the past until it didn’t matter anymore?

Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled, like the growl of something old, and black, and ugly. I folded the letter and hurried into the house. Dropping the letter on the table, I checked on Nate, then went to the bathroom, slipped off my clothes, washed up, and put on clean jeans and a T-shirt.

I stood in the doorway of Nate’s bedroom, watching him sleep. Leaning against the doorframe, I looked at his clothes strewn all over the room, his baseball cleats hung on the bedpost, his football trophies covered with the collection of dirty, ragged ball caps he would never throw away.

Every inch of the room whispered of Nate and his silly, disorganized, seat-of-the-pants way of living. Nate never brooded or got angry like Drew. He never got afraid and quiet like me. He never tried to think things out ahead of time, or to plan for what might happen, or to try to steer clear of trouble. Nate dove in headfirst without checking to see how deep the water was. No rules, no fear, no worries.

Even Daddy’s rages didn’t seem to bother him. He’d stand there while Daddy hollered and carried on, told him how stupid and worthless all of us were. Nate could turn it all off. He’d shrug and say, “He’s just drunk,” like that explained everything. I always wondered how Nate could do that. I wished I could be like him.

The rumble of a diesel engine coming up the road rattled the edges of my consciousness. Shad’s truck. Tires squealed, rattling the glass in the front door as I slipped my shoes on and went outside.

Shad’s truck was shuddering to a halt in our driveway with a flatbed trailer carrying a bulldozer fishtailing behind it. Shad threw the door open, climbed out, then slammed it shut so hard it hit the side of the truck and bounced open again.

Something inside me tightened into a knot. He looked just like he used to back in high school, jealous and possessive, angry most of the time. I’d thought he was different since he came back from Montana. He’d been quieter, less rowdy, less interested in running around drinking with his friends, easier to talk to.

Now he had that wild look in his eye again as he stopped on the other side of the yard fence. “You could let me know where you’re gonna be! I went back to the armory to pick you up, and they said you weren’t there no more.”

“I’m sorry.” What was I apologizing for? Just as in the past, I felt I was to blame for every argument between us. Just like Mama and Daddy . . .

Something pink blew by and I picked it up. A napkin from somebody’s wedding last June. Steve and Jenny, two hearts, one love . . .

Shad glanced at the napkin in my hands. “Just leave that stuff in the ditch. It’ll blow away in a day or two.”

“I don’t want it to blow away,” I said. “I’m picking up pictures and other things to take to the armory, so that people can come and find some of what they lost.”

“Doubt if anybody gives a rat about that stuff when the whole town’s been tore up.” He grabbed playfully at the scrap of pink tissue, and I held it away.

“It matters if it’s all you’ve got left.” I folded the napkin and stuck it in my pocket.

Shad let out a sarcastic laugh. “You’re ignorant sometimes. You sure you didn’t get knocked in the head yesterday?”

Heat boiled on the back of my neck and spilled into my face, but I didn’t say anything. He knew I wouldn’t.

“Let’s go to my place. My electric’s out of Hindsville, so it’s still on.” He started toward the truck.

“I can’t.”

Surprised, he stopped with one hand on the truck door, turned back, and looked at me. He crossed the distance between us. “You know, that’s the second time I come to get you and you didn’t want to go. You’re not actin’ normal, Jenilee. You sure you’re all right?”

I didn’t feel normal anymore. I wasn’t sure what I felt. I knew there wasn’t any way I could explain it to Shad.

“Drew’s here,” I said finally, looking up the road toward Mr. Jaans’s place. If Drew came home and found Shad, there would probably be a fight. Shad and Drew had hated each other for as long as I could remember. If Drew found out that Shad was back, and that we were seeing each other again, he’d probably have a fit. “We just brought Nate home from the hospital.”

Shad’s eyes burned like the coils on a stove. “I’ll come check on ya tomorrow.”

I crossed my arms over myself. “It’s probably not a good idea. I’ll call when they get the phones back on, in a day or two, all right?”

“I’ll stop by tomorrow,” he said, turning and walking toward his truck, punching a fist into his hand. “Tell Drew I said hi.” Then he climbed into the seat, squealed the tires, and threw gravel against the fence as he left our driveway.

Tell Drew I said hi. I knew what he meant by that. He wanted to start trouble with Drew.

Thunder growled again in the distance. The gathering storm was coming closer. Everything left outside tonight would get drenched.

I ran to the tractor shed, grabbed an empty feed sack, and started picking up mementos among the debris. I hurried across the yard, out the gate, and into the ditch, where more papers had blown in since the day before.

Drew’s truck topped the hill and rattled slowly up the road, drowning out the faraway thunder. He pulled up beside me, put the truck in park, and leaned out the window. “You look better. Did you get something to eat?”

I shook my head. “I’m not hungry right now,” I said, not wanting to go back to the house. “It sounds like rain’s coming. I want to pick up as much of this stuff as I can, just in case. All these papers and pictures will be ruined if it rains tonight.”

Drew turned the truck off, climbed out, and started walking with me, picking things up and looking at them as he talked. “Nate all right?”

“Sound asleep,” I answered. “I imagine he’ll stay that way for a while, after taking that pain pill.”

Drew dropped a bunch of papers into my bag. “Some fences got knocked down at old man Jaans’s place. I ran his cows back in and put the wire up the best I could. Looks like his house is still all right. The wind knocked over that old garage of his and made a mess, kind of scattered things around. It blew open the doors to this house, too, and made a mess inside.”

“That’s too bad, but at least he’s still got his house. I feel really sorry for Mrs. Gibson.”

Drew looked up the road toward the Gibson place. “Yeah. Place sure is torn up.”

“She says she doesn’t care about the place being ruined,” I said, trying to blot out the horror of those moments after the storm. “She says all that matters is that her grandkids and her kids are all right, and she wouldn’t care if she lost ten houses as long as she doesn’t lose them.”

Drew shrugged. “It’s just a house.”

“I guess. But she’s spent almost her whole life there. It’s got to be hard for her to lose everything.”

I thought of our own house. The things that had happened there defined who we were. In some ways, I wished the tornado would come back and take the house away—so that all the old definitions would be gone.

But I didn’t imagine that Mrs. Gibson felt that way about her house. Her home and her yard had been filled with the sounds of people—dinners on Sunday afternoons, Easter egg hunts with bunches of grandkids, church socials on Sunday, old ladies coming by for tea and cribbage. Even from a half mile down the road, we could hear their laughter drifting on the warm Missouri wind, reminders that just a stone’s throw away, life was good.

Drew’s eyes met mine for a moment before he bent and untangled a picture of a high school cheerleader from the weeds. “Well, all I can say is that when I heard about the storm, I didn’t call to see whether it got the house or not. All I thought about was where were Darla and the kids, and were they all right. Not much else mattered. I guess that’s pretty much how Mrs. Gibson feels.”

I nodded, surprised. I had never thought of Drew as caring about someone that way. He always seemed so hard, so far out of reach. If you love them that much, why are you fighting?

I didn’t have the courage to ask. Instead, I made small talk as we came closer to the Gibson farm. “Mrs. Gibson asked me to look around her place for some notebooks of hers. She was really worried about losing them.”

“All right,” Drew said, but squinted doubtfully at what was left of the house. “It’s going to take a miracle to find anything here.” He picked up a soggy wad of old newspaper, then dropped it in the ditch again. “Did she say what the notebooks looked like?”

“Just plain spiral notebooks, I think. Sounded like she had things written in them, stories or something.” A sense of guilt came over me. We didn’t deserve to have our house right down the road with pictures still on the walls while Mrs. Gibson’s house was in shreds.

Pink tinsel glittered near my feet. Tears prickled in my throat, because I could remember the tinsel wrapped around Mrs. Gibson’s porch railing at Easter time. But there wouldn’t be any more Easter egg hunts here.

It was hard to imagine not having Mrs. Gibson down the road anymore. She had always been there, a constant in an unpredictable world. We never knew what would await us at home as we stepped off the school bus and walked down that gravel road, but we knew Mrs. Gibson would be sitting on her porch. She’d watch the bus as if she expected her kids to still be getting off.

At Easter, her place would be alive with lilies. At Halloween the porch would be lined with pumpkins. At Thanksgiving she’d set a big wooden turkey by the door. At Christmas she would wind pine garlands and red ribbons around the porch railings. The Gibson place was the same year after year. It looked the same. It sounded the same.

And now, suddenly, it lay in ruins, without a word to say. Not a sound. Not a whisper. Not the tinkling of the wind chime, or the squeaking of the screen door, or the swish of sheets on the clothes-line. Not even the low flutter of leaves on the old trees.

I never realized how I loved the flutter of cottonwood leaves. Looking at the twisted remains of the stumps, I felt tears spill onto my cheeks.

“Jenilee, you all right?”

I nodded, wiping my eyes impatiently. “I was just thinking about how quiet it is. Nothing sounds the way I remember.”

“Hard to get used to the quiet,” he agreed, squinting at what was left of the trees in the orchard. “I remember thinking that when Darla and the kids moved out. Seemed like I missed the sound of them as much as anything.”

Then why did you let them go? I reached across the space between us and laid my hand on his arm. Is it just Daddy you want to keep separate from them, or is it all of us? “I’d like to meet them someday.”

“It’s hard to picture how it could happen. Anytime soon, at least.” The words were little more than a sigh. “It’s pretty much of a mess. It’s not . . . like things are supposed to be. Guess we Lanes don’t do the family thing too well.” He turned and headed off across the yard, looking beaten.

I watched him go, wondering what he was thinking. Drew could remember how it was when Grandma and Grandpa were alive better than any of us could. He knew what a normal life felt like, what it was like to be taken care of and not be afraid. Maybe that was why he, of the three of us, had the hardest time living with the way things turned out.

Drew and I searched the area around Mrs. Gibson’s place without talking. Drew dug out her old wooden feed bin from under the fallen-down barn, and we started filling it with items that could still be used—a few dishes, some old picture frames, a toy horse model with only three legs, some pots, pans, and other cooking stuff, a photo album, a recipe box, some quilts, anything that we thought she might want. It was strange to be digging through the bits and pieces of her life—seeing all the things that were once in her house.

Walking by on the way home from the school bus, I had always wondered what was inside.

Drew closed the feed bin as the sun descended and the air turned still. “I don’t think there are any notebooks here, Jenilee. I found some old-time pictures of the Poetry baseball team, and one of a parade in front of Poetry School. They’re probably hers.” He put them in the feed sack, then stood up and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Getting too dark to look anymore. I think we better head on home.”

“Look at this,” I said, clearing dirt from the twisted framework of a stained-glass window. “The dove is still in one piece. I bet the rest of it could be fixed. Can we carry it home?”

Drew shrugged. “Guess so.” He looked at the caved-in cellar door. “Any point in pulling that cellar door out of there? We could put her stuff down here so it won’t get wet if it rains.”

I shivered, remembering. “No. There isn’t anything down there.” The dark, damp feeling of that place came over me, and I turned away, in a hurry to be gone. “Let’s just close the lid on that old feed box. It’ll keep the rainwater off.”

“All right,” Drew said, then closed the feed box before lifting the heavy stained-glass window frame. “You sure you want to take this home?”

“Um-hmm. It ought to be fixed. It’s too pretty to leave in the dirt.” I remembered that window in the peak of the house, how it glittered in the afternoon sunlight, making the dove seem to come to life. I wanted to be like that dove, white and pretty, wings spread, high above everything.

Distant thunder rumbled as we started toward home. I shivered as a cool puff of breeze fluttered down the gravel road.

Drew squinted at the churning black clouds on the horizon. “Rain’s coming.”

I ducked my head, trying to ignore the clouds. “I hope not.” I was thinking of all the pictures and belongings that were still lying everywhere, and of all the people in Poetry staying in tents.

“Looks like it might already be coming down over south of Poetry. We better step it up.”

We hurried home as thunder growled and lightning whipped the sky. Drew put the stained-glass window in the garage, then ran out to pull his truck into the driveway and close up the barn.

I went inside to check on Nate.

“Nate,” I whispered at the door to his room, “are you hungry? I’m going to warm up some canned chili.”

Nate shook his head and pulled the covers up, murmuring something before he drifted back to sleep.

I closed the door to his room, walked through the house, and lit the oil lamps we always used when the power was out. The house was already getting dark as the storm blotted the last of the evening sun.

Heavy drops of rain began pelting the windows as Drew came in the front door and fought the wind to pull the screen shut behind him. He set the feed sack full of papers on the floor and came across the room dripping.

Pulling his cell phone and keys out of his pocket, he set them on the table. “I’m gonna go clean up.”

“I’ll put some chili on,” I said, shivering in the gust of cool air, then jumping as lightning lit the windows and thunder boomed so loud it seemed to rattle the house to its foundations.

Drew frowned at me. “You’re nervous as a cat.”

I nodded, rubbing my hands up and down my arms. “It’s just the storm.” I’m glad you’re here, Drew. “It just seems . . . strange to be back here in a storm again.”

Drew looked around the room, as if he were seeing it for the first time, the way a stranger would have seen it—the paneling with holes in it, the threadbare curtains, the stained orange shag carpeting, the windows with bushes grown so high that little light came through, the torn recliner, the couch so faded the forest print barely showed anymore.

There were empty spots on the walls where pictures used to hang. I wondered if Drew noticed that Daddy had taken down all the photographs of him.

His body stiffened. He shook his head as he disappeared down the hall, muttering, “Home sweet home.”