Good Hope Road

Drew leaned forward to look down the hill toward the armory as we pulled into Poetry. “What in the world’s going on there?” He slowed the truck as we passed. “How come there are news crews at the armory?”

“I don’t know . . .” I muttered. “With all the tornado damage up toward Kansas City, I can’t imagine why they would want to come here. Seems like there would be better stories in other places. Pull in, all right?”

“Nate, you better stay here,” Drew said. An uneasy feeling churned in my stomach as I climbed the steps behind him and stood trying to see past the crowd in the doorway.

I caught a glimpse of the sheriff, Mrs. Gibson, and Dr. Albright in front of the picture wall. The Andersons stood beside them, supporting a bundle of blankets in their arms. Cameras flashed and the bundle moved, the blanket falling away to reveal a tiny face.

All at once I knew. “Oh, Drew!” I gasped. “Oh, Drew, she’s got her baby! She’s got her baby back!” I rushed through the crowd, needing to see, to touch the tiny blue-eyed girl whose picture had come to me on the wind.

Mrs. Anderson held the baby up as I pushed past the circle of bodies. Her eyes, red-rimmed, exhausted, filled with joy, met mine. “We got her back. We found her,” she whispered, as I touched the side of the baby’s face. “It was the picture. The picture helped us find her.”

“Yes, that’s right,” the sheriff replied. “The baby was brought to the hospital in the hours after the storm by a man who hasn’t been identified yet. The rescuer is still unconscious and can’t provide details. The hospital staff assumed that the baby was his daughter, until late today, when they saw the baby’s picture being circulated on the news. Of course, we took the Andersons to be reunited with their baby girl right away.” The sheriff sidestepped to put his arms over the Andersons’ shoulders. “We’re going to let these folks have some time with their baby now. I’d be grateful if you people wouldn’t follow. This family deserves some privacy.”

“From everywhere,” Mrs. Gibson answered. “All sorts of folks carried them in here, and a number of folks worked to get them hung up.” She closed the space between us and caught my hand, pulling me close.

“It was all a project of the Poetry garden club,” said a familiar voice, rising above the crowd. Mazelle Sibley pushed her way to the front and sidled up beside Mrs. Gibson. “When the call went out for help in sorting and hanging the pictures, all of us left behind our own damaged homes and came here to give of ourselves. After days of feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, well, it was a pure pleasure to—”

“It was all the idea of our Jenilee Lane, here,” Mrs. Gibson butted in, tipping her chin up and bumping her hip out, so she knocked Mrs. Sibley off balance. “She’s the one responsible for the picture walls, and for finding the photo of the Anderson baby, and for savin’ my life, and my granddaughter’s life after the tornado. She’s no less than a hero.” She glanced at Dr. Albright, and he smiled at her, then leaned closer to me and Mrs. Gibson as a battery of flashbulbs snapped.

I wrapped my arms around Mrs. Gibson and hugged her while the flashbulbs popped, then faded away. Finally, the reporters left us and moved around the room snapping pictures and doing interviews with some of the garden club ladies.

Mrs. Gibson straightened and held my face in her hands. “Oh, now look. I’ve made you cry.” She pulled a hankie from her dress pocket and dabbed my cheeks. “Lands, what a day this has been! What a day!” She put an arm over my shoulder. “And speaking of things like that, there’s some folks over here I think you’ll like to meet.”

She gave me a sly sideways look. “It’s a surprise.” She led me toward the back corner of the building, where Caleb was standing beside a family looking at the picture wall. They turned to greet us as we came closer. I recognized the husband.

“I remember,” I said, still wondering why Mrs. Gibson had brought me there. “Who knew all this would come from a few sheets of paper and a roll of tape?”

“Pretty amazing.” He smiled, and nodded toward his wife. “This is Kate. Caleb tells us you and Kate are second or third cousins, something like that.”

Kate smiled, shifting the baby in her arms to one side so she could shake my hand. Her brown eyes were warm and friendly. “Your grandmother and my grandmother were sisters.”

Kate released my hand, and I stood there not knowing what to say. It was hard to imagine Nate, Drew, and me as part of a family. All of our lives it had been just Mama, Daddy, and us. “We didn’t have much to do with Mama’s family.” As soon as the words came out, I realized they didn’t sound good. “But, I mean, we would have . . . if we’d known.”

Kate gave an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, us too. We’ve always lived away from Hindsville, and we just moved back a little over a year ago. I do remember meeting your grandmother one time at a family reunion a long, long time ago.”

“And this is Rose.” Kate jiggled the baby girl in her arms. At the sound of her name, the baby started to fuss. Kate frowned. “And I’ve just reminded her that she’s hungry.”

Kate nodded, touching my arm. “We won’t keep you, Jenilee. But, listen, after things get back to normal, we’d love to have you come out to the farm sometime to visit. There are some old pictures of Grandma and her sisters there. You might like copies of those.”

“I’d like that,” I said, still trying to imagine myself as part of a family that included so many people. I wondered what Daddy would say if he knew I was standing there talking to them. Then I wondered if things would ever get back to the kind of normal Kate was talking about. Normal for us wasn’t the same as normal for other people.

“It’s really nice to have met you,” Kate said. “If there’s ever anything we can do, please feel that you can call, all right? We’re not far away.”

“All right.” I glanced at Caleb. The way Kate said those last words made me wonder if he had been telling her about us, and maybe she felt sorry for us.

“Take care,” Ben said, and they headed toward the door. As they left, Drew and Nate were coming in. I thought about trying to introduce them, but I wasn’t sure what kind of a mood Drew was in. He hadn’t said anything all the way home from the hospital.

Mrs. Gibson clapped her hands together, looking pleased with herself for having made the family connections for me. “Oh, say, it looks like Drew’s brought your little brother in. Poor thing, looks like they’ve got him in a cast from toe to hip.”

“They had to put a plate in his leg to fix it,” I told her as we crossed the room to where Drew was helping Nate into a lawn chair next to Mr. Jaans’s bed.

“. . . and ain’t all this somethin’?” We caught the tail end of what Mr. Jaans was saying. “I been alive a long time, but I ain’t ever seen a day as good as this one—all them folks coming in and picking up their pictures, and then the Andersons getting their baby back. It’s enough to put the faith right back in ya, that’s for sure.”

Mr. Jaans smiled. “I have to say it’s done me good to be part of it. Sorting through all those pictures today, giving folks back a little piece of their memories, that was the best feeling I’ve had in a long time. Feels good to have the chance to do for other folks.”

Mr. Jaans didn’t seem bothered. “I’d say a bunch of people had a hand in it.” He chuckled, glancing at Drew and me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “And you, probably both hands, Eudora.”

Mrs. Gibson coughed, her mouth dropping open. “You hush up, June Jaans.” The corners of her lips turned upward. She wheeled around and hurried away so he wouldn’t see her smile.

“I don’t know why you bother. She’s so mean to you all the time.” I knew what it felt like to be on Mrs. Gibson’s bad side. I didn’t understand why she could change her mind about me and not about Mr. Jaans.

“There’s a lot of history to it,” he said, then lay back against his pillow. I could tell he didn’t intend to reveal any more, at least not in front of Drew and Nate.

Drew cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Looked like your cows were all in pretty good shape yesterday, June. A few skin cuts, a little hide knocked off here and there, and I fixed some fence where your old bull got out.”

“I do appreciate that. Ain’t seen old Charlie, have ya? I hear he went wandering by what’s left of Mazelle Sibley’s grocery, near scared her to death. She had a bucket in her hand and Charlie was hungry. Chased her plumb down the block and into the Willamses’ pasture. She finally got shed of him by runnin’ through a bog. Charlie don’t like mud much.” He laughed, then winced, grabbing his ribs. “Lands! I’d of paid money to see that. . . .”

My mind drifted away from the conversation, and I looked toward the doorway. Outside on the stoop, I could see Mrs. Gibson’s shoulder. Her hands were moving and I could hear her talking to someone. I left Drew and Nate and walked over to see who was out there with her.

Weldon, Janet, and Dr. Albright were standing with her on the steps. They stopped talking when they saw me, and they gave each other strange, secretive looks that made me wonder if they had been talking about me. The bushes rustled behind them and Lacy emerged. She walked up the steps and slipped her hand into mine as an uncomfortable silence fell over us.

Lacy squeezed my hand. I tried to ignore the rest of them and focus on her as Weldon and Janet went into the building and Dr. Albright headed toward the motor home.

“How are you today, Lacy?” I asked, smoothing the dark hair away from her face. Her gray eyes met mine, and for just an instant I pictured those eyes looking at me from the darkness behind the ventilation screen in Mrs. Gibson’s cellar. She seemed as lost now as she was then.

Lacy grinned, her eyes shining for only a moment before she did something that I could remember doing all my life. She ducked her head and hid the smile. Behind me, Mrs. Gibson sighed heavily, her disappointment like a cloud in the air. I suppose it was hard for her to understand why Lacy stayed closed within herself. Mrs. Gibson didn’t know what it was like to feel the way Lacy felt—small and helpless and afraid of everything.

When you’re afraid of everything, the thing you are most afraid of is happiness. You’re afraid to step into even a little piece of it, because you know that as soon as you do, someone will slam the door, and you’ll be trapped in the darkness again, remembering how the light felt.

Lacy pulled her hand away and looked past me toward the door. Standing up, I glanced at Mrs. Gibson, who had turned her back to us, her shoulders trembling with withheld tears.

Lacy slipped past me and into the armory, and I let her go. I didn’t want her to see her grandmother crying and know she was the cause of it.

I stood beside Mrs. Gibson, not knowing how to comfort her. “She’ll be all right,” I told her. “Sometimes it’s just hard to understand things when you’re a kid.”

“I don’t think my mama wanted me to, either.” I thought of the times Mama cried and told me she didn’t want my life to be the way it was. “Sometimes it just happens.”

“It’s my fault.” Mrs. Gibson wiped her eyes again, unfolded the hankie, and blew her nose like a foghorn. “I been a mean, stubborn old lady, and I drove her father away because I didn’t like that gal he married, and that’s why I don’t know Lacy enough to be a help to her. I’m just one more stranger she don’t know and don’t like. The only thing she likes about me is my old cat, Mr. Whiskers.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to all that. As far as I could tell, a lot of it was true. Mrs. Gibson could be a mean old lady. Once she got her mind made up about somebody, it took something like a tornado to change it. “Sometimes things like that take time.”

“I ain’t got time!” she wailed, wadding the hankie in her fist and punching it into her pocket, her back turned to me. “I’m an old lady, and I’m losin’ my memory, and I can’t leave my life with all this meanness in it. God ain’t gonna let me. He’s gonna keep sending me back until I straighten out all this mess and keep the promises I made. That’s what that angel come to tell me. I gotta set things right this time, get shed of all this meanness in me. God done turned me back from heaven once, and . . .” She paused. Gasping in a breath, she turned and pressed her fingers to her mouth, shocked by what she had said to me.

I stood looking at her, as dumbfounded as she was. We gaped at each other, both wondering what to say now. She had sounded crazy. Even she knew that.

Except the part about her losing her memory. That explained a lot of things—like why she would sometimes ask me the same question two or three times in a day, or why she sometimes looked at me for an instant the way she used to before the tornado, or why she kept forgetting Dr. Albright’s name.

Was that why she was so desperate to find the notebooks? Because she couldn’t remember things without writing them down? I could tell by looking at her that she didn’t want me to know.

Silence stretched like a tightrope between us. “I don’t think you want to be mean to people,” I said finally. “It’s just a . . . well, sort of a habit, I guess. People can change habits, if they want to.”

Pressing a hand to her chest, she craned her neck back, as if she couldn’t believe I had said that. “That . . . that goes way back.” She coughed.

“Maybe so.” I felt strangely bold. “But if you’re trying to make God happy, that would be a good way. Mr. Jaans isn’t a bad person. He’s just trying to get by the best way he can, like everybody else.”

Flaring her nostrils and widening her eyes, she peered around my shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “He done some bad things in the past.”

“Everyone has. You just said you had. A bad past is like gristle. You can either starve to death chewing on it, or you can spit it out and see what else is on the table.”

Finally, she pointed a finger indignantly toward the door. “That man turned my head and talked about marriage, and all the while he was sparkin’ my baby sister, Ivy. He run off with her when she was just fifteen. Said he was gonna take us to a USO dance. He sneaked Ivy out of there and never brought her home. Come to find out, he’d got her pregnant, and they had to get married, and it was the shame of the county. The only reason he was sparkin’ me was because I was old enough that Mama would let me date, and then Ivy could come along with us. That was the only way he could see Ivy, and he knew it. Once he and Ivy run off, everyone in the whole county knew it, too.”

“And you can see why I ain’t gonna go makin’ nice with him, actin’ like nothing ever happened. He talked Ivy into getting married too young, and she shouldn’t of been having babies, and she died trying to birth that baby. His baby. It was a terrible thing. He had the funeral for her and the baby—buried them right in the casket together, and didn’t give my family one single say in the funeral or anything. Then he went off to the war, and by the time he come home again, he brought a new wife with him, and bought that place right down the road from us. He went right on like our Ivy never existed at all, and we had to watch it year in and year out. I ain’t ever gonna forgive him for it.”

I looked at the tents shuddering in the breeze below, not knowing what to say. Mr. Jaans had shown such kindness to me and Mama. I couldn’t imagine that he would do the cruel things Mrs. Gibson was talking about.

“Maybe he really loved Ivy,” I said, thinking of the words from the old letter I had found in our yard and how much that old couple must have loved each other. “Maybe he moved back here because he wanted to be close to her. Maybe he did what most people do.” What my mama did. “Maybe he just did the best he could to go on when his life wasn’t what he thought it was going to be.”

She shook her head, hugging her arms around herself as a whippoorwill started singing somewhere close by. Finally I turned away, leaving her there, and went inside to get Drew and Nate.

Lacy was sitting beside Mr. Jaans’s bed with a red string around her fingers, learning how to make a cat’s cradle. “Then . . . I do this . . . one?” she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be talking to him.

“That’s right, precious.” Mr. Jaans smiled at her, his aged, trembling hands guiding hers. “All right, see. That’s cup and saucer. Right. See? You’ve got it. Hook your thumb in there like this now.”

Mrs. Gibson’s eyes widened and she glanced at me, then back at Lacy and Mr. Jaans. Mrs. Gibson’s arms fell to her sides, and she leaned against the wall.

In the doorway, I stopped and looked back at all the pictures taped to the walls. They fluttered in the breeze from the doorway, whispering in the still air, a thousand stories, countless memories, now patched together like an enormous, murmuring quilt.