Good Hope Road (15 page)

“I haven’t heard anything. I’m sure they’re just holed up somewhere waitin’. There’s a lot of roads flooded and blocked between here and Kansas City.” Again, he threw his hands into the air, widening his eyes at me. “How are they supposed to let you know anything if you
ain’t home
?”

I winced and looked away. I hated it when he talked to me like I was stupid. “The phones are out. They couldn’t get in touch with me there, anyway.”

“Well, at least
I
could of found you there.” His voice echoed across the parking lot. By the soup kettles below, Mrs. Gibson stopped talking and looked our way.

“I’m all right. I couldn’t just sit at the house alone.” I wondered why I was explaining myself to him. Why I felt I had to.

“You look like crap. Did you get scratched up or somethin’?”

I wiped my face on the shoulder of my T-shirt. “I’m all right.”

He pulled me into his arms. I wanted to push away from him, but I knew he would get mad and make a scene in front of everyone. I closed my eyes and tried to think.

I felt him release me, slip his arm around my shoulders, and guide me toward the truck. “Come on. I’ll give ya a ride home.”

An answer drummed in my head, growing louder until finally it found a voice. “No. I’m staying here.”

He kicked a boot toe into the gravel, sending tiny stones across the parking lot. “What’s wrong with you? You get knocked in the head or somethin’?”

Actually, yes
. “I’m helping the doctor take care of people here. I can’t leave.”

“Jenilee, that’s ignorant. What do you know about doctoring people?”

The way he said it cut deep—as if there were no possibility that I could do something so important. I wanted to tell him about everything that had happened today. I wanted to say,
I know more about taking care of people than you think. I’ve been doing it all my life.
Instead, I looked away and said, “Enough, I guess.”

He just shook his head and said, “This is stupid. Get in the truck,” like he knew I would do it.

For the first time in my life, I stood my ground. “I’m staying here. You could stay and help, too.” Some part of me hoped he would say yes, even though I knew better. Shad only did what Shad wanted to do.

He started toward his truck, cussing under his breath. “I ain’t got time. I gotta go check on the construction site down Ataberry Road. We got a dozer and a few other things still there. Daddy said to load the dozer up and take it home, so nobody gets ideas about using it.”

He climbed in the truck and started the engine, rattling the ground beneath my feet. I stood watching him, thinking about what he had said.
Daddy said to load the dozer and take it home, so nobody gets ideas about using it.

Had he even considered how much a dozer would help in town right now? Had he even thought about the fact that, even though his daddy told him to take the dozer home, it might not be the right thing to do?

I crossed my arms over myself and watched him drive away, the truck roaring through the parking lot, scattering debris. I watched it turn onto Main Street, steering haphazardly around downed branches and piles of rubble, until it disappeared behind what was left of the sale barn.

Staring at the spot where it had left my sight, I thought about how much had changed in the space of one ordinary day. It was late afternoon again. Just twenty-four hours ago we were living in a different world. I was somebody different. How could so much change in so short a time?

“Amanda Lynne! Amanda Lynne!” a voice called from somewhere down the hill.

“Here, Mama.”

The second voice was close, the high-pitched singsong of a child. I looked down to see a little red-haired girl, maybe five years old, sitting on the armory steps holding the injured cat I had found earlier in the day.

I had forgotten about the cat. “Are you taking care of the kitty?” I asked.

“It’s
my
kitty,” she said. “He blowed away in the storm. I don’t know how he getted here.”

I smiled, watching the cat nestle into her arms. “Well, it’s good you got him back.”

“I hope my grandpa comes here, too.”

“Me too.” A lump rose in my throat.

She glanced up as her mother crested the hill, looking frantic. “Amanda! I asked you not to wander off. You scared me to death!”

The little girl stood up, frowning guiltily at her mother. “I had to find Gray Kitty.” Rubbing her face against the softness of the cat’s fur, she smiled at me. “Anyways, I was talkin’ to the doctor lady. That’s all. I wasn’t alone.” She shifted the cat and put her hand in her mother’s.

“Sorry,” her mother said, smiling at me. “She’s been fussing over this cat all day. She let him get out the door yesterday, and we couldn’t find him when the tornado came. She felt so bad about it, she just cried and cried, and then this morning when we came here, all of a sudden, there was her cat. It was amazing. It was a miracle.”

“That
is
amazing,” I replied
. A miracle. Is there a place for miracles in the middle of something so terrible?
“I’m glad you got your cat back, Amanda Lynne.”

Something about saying her name triggered a memory in me, and I raised a finger. “Don’t leave yet. I think I have something else of yours.” Excitement filled me, and I hurried into the armory and grabbed my forgotten bag of keepsakes from under Mr. Jaans’s bed. He jerked in surprise and looked at me.

“Long story,” I whispered, because the toddler in his arms was asleep again. I rushed out the door.

Amanda Lynne and her mother watched me questioningly as I unfolded the sack on the steps and dug through the photos until I found the little gold bracelet. Untangling it from the nest of papers, I read the engraving,
Amanda Lynne
. “This must be yours,” I said, holding it out to her.

She covered her mouth with her hands. “My bracelet!” she gasped behind her fingers, then took it carefully, as if she couldn’t believe it was really there. Holding it in front of herself with one hand, she danced in a circle, singing, “My bracelet! My bracelet!”

Her mother gaped at me in amazement. “Where in the world did you find that?”

“About three miles out on Good Hope Road, just lying by the ditch.” I caught a dose of Amanda’s joy and found myself smiling. The horrible feeling inside me vanished, and the joy of the moment replaced it.

Amanda’s mother touched her trembling lips, then laid a hand over her heart. “Oh,” she breathed, watching her daughter dance with the cat in one arm and the bracelet held out in front of her. “Her grandpa got her that bracelet. It’s special to her. Thank you so much for returning it.”

“You’re welcome.”
Of all the people I could have run into, I ran into Amanda Lynne, and I was the one who found her bracelet. Miracles do happen. Even here. Even now.

“When everything’s gone, little things matter a lot,” Amanda’s mother said. “We still haven’t heard from her grandpa. He lives up toward Kansas City. We’re keeping our fingers crossed and praying.”

Perhaps the cat and the bracelet are the answer to a prayer. Maybe prayers do get answered.
“Me too,” I said finally, thinking of Nate and Daddy.

She seemed to know what I was thinking. “Good luck.” She took Amanda’s hand, the bracelet laced between their intertwined fingers as they started down the hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he sun crept lower as I listened to the sound of cars coming and going, picking up bottled water and hot food from the soup line below. In the camp, propane lanterns and campfires flickered to life. The scene seemed almost peaceful, but as I shifted my gaze to our devastated town below, there was no peace.

How can all of this be happening?
The question tapped a well-spring of grief inside me
. It isn’t fair. It shouldn’t happen. What did any of us do to deserve this?

Unable to face the pain that came with that thought, I climbed the steps to the armory to find something, anything that needed to be done. Some immediate need to block out eventual realities.

“Well, I just wanted you to know.” At the sound of Mrs. Sibley’s voice, I stopped just outside the door. “I
thought
you should be told. Well . . . because there could come a
lawsuit
out of it later, or something
worse
even.”

“Mrs. . . . uhhh . . . Sibley, is it?” It was Dr. Albright’s voice.

“Why,
yes
.
Mazelle
Sibley. Don’t you remember? I told you this morning that for years my father was the only doctor in this town, rest his soul. So I do know what you are going through, Dr. Albright. I do know how ordinary folk will come around thinking they know more about doctoring than the doctor, and that is why I feel it is so important that I . . . well . . . I inform you of this matter. You being from out of town, you wouldn’t know.”

“Mrs. Sibley, I’m tired, and I’m hungry. I’m not interested in making friends here or sharing the town gossip. If I hadn’t stayed a half hour too long on the golf course and then tried to take the back roads to the interstate, I wouldn’t even
be
here. But as bad as things were today, it is a good thing that I was here.”

“Yes, truly. Oh, you don’t know how true that is,” Mrs. Sibley rushed on. “And that is
exactly
why I wanted to make
sure
you
knew
that—”

“That what? If you have something to say to me, just come out with it.”

I took a step closer to the door and saw Dr. Albright throw up his hands and pace a few steps away. Mrs. Sibley followed him, twitching her nose like a mouse looking for a piece of cheese.

“That
Jenilee Lane
hasn’t a
scrap
of medical training.” She made a
tsk-tsk
sound under her breath, as if she hated having to tell him that. “I fear you’ve been misled. She shouldn’t be giving medical aid to people. Well, my word, she barely even graduated high school. She might kill someone!”

I stepped back from the door, feeling as if something hard and cold had slammed into my stomach. I wondered what Dr. Albright must be thinking about me now.

Mrs. Sibley clicked air through her teeth again. “Well, I can
imagine
what
she’s
told you about herself, but the
truth
is that there isn’t a
one
of those
Lanes
who has more than a
high school
education, and that is
only
because the school pushed them through out of a sense of
charity
. The Lanes are the worst
white trash
in the county.”

I didn’t wait to hear Dr. Albright’s answer. I spun around with the sack still clutched in my arms and ran away.

... those Lanes are the worst
white trash
in the county
.

It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. Why did it hurt so much now? Why did it make my stomach churn to think that she had said it to Dr. Albright?

Sitting on one of the empty picnic tables in the fading sunlight, I faced the answers to my own questions. It hurt because inside me there was the hope that things would be different now. It hurt because Dr. Albright looked at me with respect. Because, together with him, I had helped people. I had hoped they would begin to see me differently.

Now, one by one, they would all go back to the way they used to be, and so would I.

Footsteps crunched on last year’s leaves, and I looked up to see Mrs. Gibson coming. I wiped my eyes as she sat on the bench beside me.

“What’s in there?” She motioned to the paper bag in my lap.

Without thinking, I pulled it away. I was used to Daddy grabbing things out of my hands and looking them over as if everything belonged to him. If I acted like the things mattered to me, then he would tell me how stupid that was, or throw them in the trash.

“Pictures and things I found in our yard and on the county road,” I said, hoping she couldn’t tell I’d been crying. “Just things I thought someone might want back, but I don’t know who they belong to.” I pulled a school picture from the bag. “This one is the little Taylor boy. Are they here anywhere? I found his kindergarten graduation certificate, too.”

Mrs. Gibson took the picture. “The Taylors come in for some bottled water earlier today, but they’re gone now. I think they’re camping out in the root cellar on their place. But if they come in tomorrow, I’ll tell them it’s here. It’ll probably make them real happy to have it returned.” She handed the picture back to me.

“It probably would,” I agreed, and put the picture back in the sack. I sat staring into the bag for a moment, looking at the shadowy images of acquaintances, neighbors, strangers. Where were they now? What were they thinking?

Mrs. Gibson leaned closer and peered into the bag. “You didn’t happen to find any notebooks around anywhere, did you? Nothing fancy. Just little spiral notebooks?” She scratched the pleated lines below her bottom lip, looking worried. “It’s not a big matter, really. Just sometimes I write things down in notebooks, and, of course, they’ve come up lost with everything else in the storm.”

I met her eyes for a moment over the top of the sack. There was desperation there, something more that she didn’t want to say. “I haven’t found any notebooks yet,” I said. “I’ll look for them as soon as I get home.” Reaching into the bag, I took the piece of the old letter and held it out to her. “I found this. Is it yours?”

She glanced at the letter and shook her head. “No. Doesn’t look familiar.”