Blossom Promise (7 page)

She hurried around the stands, her hat low on her head. She passed the pens where the bulls, horses, and calves stood, quiet now. There were yells from the crowd as the bull fighter made a close pass.

Maggie stopped. She slipped behind a horse trailer. Her mother was just ahead, joining a group of people in bright shirts, well-worn hats.

Maggie’s eyes narrowed with concentration. She bit her bottom lip. She worked her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

The crowd shifted to make room for Vicki Blossom. It was as if they had shifted like this before, as if they all knew Vicki Blossom belonged inside the circle. Vicki Blossom moved quickly. Before the crowd closed around her, Maggie saw her throw her arms around Cody.

“Cody, love,” she cried. “Oh, shug, you were wonderful!” And then, as Maggie pulled back into the shadows, her mother kissed him.

“Whoa, slow down, Junior, slow down,” Pap said. “Take it easy.”

Junior had run down the hill and into Pap’s arms so fast he had spun Pap all the way around.

“Now, what’s all the yelling about? Start at the beginning.”

Junior regained his balance. He caught his breath. Then he began shifting anxiously from foot to foot.

“The beginning,” Pap said again.

“That is the beginning, Pap! Dump’s been bit by a snake.
A snake!
” Junior used two big gestures with the last two words, the way he would if he’d been saying them on a stage.

“Now, calm down. What kind of snake was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Junior, I’ve taught you about snakes. Did it have markings on it?”

“I think so. Anyway it wasn’t a black snake.”

Junior tried to turn Pap around and head him in the right direction like somebody starting a game of blind man’s bluff; Pap rocked back on his heels.

“We got to find him, Pap, and give him some medicine.” Junior gave up on pushing Pap. He grabbed Pap’s hand and began tugging him toward home.

“Junior, hold on. There ain’t no medicine you can give a dog for a snake bite.”

“I know there is. There has to be.”

“A snake-bit dog either gets well on his own or he don’t.”

Junior turned his face up to Pap.

“My best dog when I was a boy got bit by a water moccasin on the nose.”

“The black hunting dog?” Junior asked.

“The pit bull—Buster, we called him. Buster got bit right there.” Pap pinched his left nostril. “Buster went running off just like you claim Dump did and didn’t come back for four days.”

“Four days!”

“That’s right. Buster was an ugly-looking dog anyway, but when he came home after those four days, he was the ugliest thing you ever saw outside the moving pictures. They had an Ugly Dog Contest that year at the fair, and didn’t no other dog stand a chance. Buster took the blue ribbon and the red ribbon. The yellow ribbon went to a little Mexican dog that didn’t have no hair.”

“And he lived?”

“To a ripe old age,” Pap said.

“I think Dump got bit on the leg.”

“Well, that helps his odds. If you got to get bit, an extremity is the best place.”

“A hind leg is an extremity?”

“Yes.”

Junior sighed. “It was sort of my fault, Pap. I was crawling under the house and Dump was afraid I was coming to do something to him, and so he stepped back to get away from me and—”

Suddenly Pap said, “Hush!” He threw up his head. He cupped one hand behind his ear so he could hear better.

Junior started to finish the story about Dump, but Pap grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard. He said again, “Hush, Junior!”

“What is it, Pap?”

“Lord, somebody else is in trouble. Hear that? They’re yelling for help. It sounds like Vern.”

Pap started up the creek. He went from tree to tree, pulling himself along. Junior followed.

“It is Vern!” Pap said.

He moved up the hill toward the barn. Now that there were no trees to help him along, Pap was making swimming motions with his arms.

He had to get to the top of the hill. He would have a good view from there. And he didn’t have any time to waste.

“Vern needs my help,” he reminded himself as he ran. “Vern needs me.”

Beside him Junior was running sideways. “What are you going to do, Pap?”

“Help Vern,” Pap gasped.

The cries were getting louder. Pap knew now that they were coming from the creek. At the crest of the hill, he paused, with one hand over his heart, one hand shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun.

He saw nothing. He turned and ran for the barn. He knew that if Vern was out in the middle of the creek, he might need to be pulled in. Pap wanted a rope in his hand.

Pap’s ropes were coiled in loops in a wooden box just inside the barn door. No one ever bothered Pap’s ropes, so they were always where Pap could get them. Even when Junior or Vern desperately needed rope, as they often did, they never took Pap’s.

Pap rushed into the barn. Birds flew out, startled from their perches. Pap never saw them.

He grabbed his longest rope, the ninety-foot one he used for “Around the World.” With the rope in one hand, Pap ran toward the swollen creek.

With his other hand, he clutched his heart, trying to keep it from jumping out of his chest.

He stood on the bank, heart thudding unevenly like an old overworked machine. He ignored the pain as he uncoiled his rope.

“Pap—”

“Out of my way, Junior.”

With one deft shake of his hand, the noose twirled at Pap’s side. The rope turned easily, but the rest of Pap’s body was tight, tense. His chin jutted out stiffly in his old sagging face.

“It’s two voices,” Junior said, listening. “Michael must be with Vern. They must have fallen into the creek together. You’ll have to rope both of them, Pap.”

“Oh, Lord, here they are,” Pap gasped. He had been waiting for it, but still it was a shock.

The raft swept around the bend, obviously at the mercy of the strong current. It was low in the water now. The boys were at the back, desperately kicking, trying to push the raft toward the shore.

“Get ready, Pap,” Junior said.

Pap didn’t answer. He said “Lord, help me” as the raft hit a ripple in the current. The front tipped up, and the back dipped even lower in the water.

“Hold on!” Pap yelled. Under his breath he said, “They’re going to drown before they get to me.”

“Just don’t miss,” Junior advised.

Pap waded into the muddy water. At his side, the rope twirled evenly, effortlessly. Junior ran up the creek toward the raft, beckoning it to shore.

“Over this way,” he shouted. “Over here.”

Pap waded deeper into the water. He would have his best shot at roping the boys when they got to the bend in the creek. The loop of rope was twirling at shoulder height now so it wouldn’t touch the water.

All week long, while the creek had been rising, Pap had been watching it from a rocking chair on the porch. Pap knew that the raft would probably spin around at least once before sweeping around the turn. Pap had watched logs and trash get caught there in an eddy all week.

He got set. He edged farther out into the creek. The muddy water filled his high-topped shoes, splashed on his swollen knees. He took another step. The water rushed around his thighs.

“I’ll get you at the fishing hole,” he called to the boys.

He didn’t know whether they could hear him or not. Both of them were yelling their heads off.

“The fishing hole!” Pap pointed to the inner curve of the creek where he and Vern had fished so often. “Get ready!”

Vern nodded. He freed one hand and waved it to show he heard. He was ready.

Pap wound the rope around his head. The loop grew bigger. The rope was whizzing now, a long powerful curl of rope.

“Help me, Lord,” Pap said.

At the exact moment that the raft paused in the bend of the creek, caught in the current, Pap let the rope out across the water in a long graceful arc.

It was a perfect throw. The boys watched it come. It was the most beautiful thing Junior had ever seen in his life, an absolutely perfect throw. Both Vern and Michael put up a hand, and both of them caught the rope at the same time.

“You got them! You did it! You got them!” Junior cried. He was dancing with pleasure. “You did it, Pap!”

And then, in that moment of triumph, a terrible thing happened. Pap let go of his end of the rope. He clutched his chest with both hands and stumbled up the bank.

Junior cried, “Pap!”

Junior was too stunned to move.

“Pap!”

Pap didn’t answer. He grabbed a tree for support. He leaned there for a long moment. His body was suddenly stiff, bowed backward in an arch.

And then Pap let go. His body twisted around the trunk of the tree like an old vine. Then he lay over the roots and didn’t move.

Junior didn’t move either.

Behind him the raft swept around the bend and out of sight, with Pap’s rope trailing uselessly behind.

Maggie was in room 104 of the Bar None Motel. She was alone, sitting at the desk. For thirty minutes she had been trying to write four postcards.

She had gotten these postcards when she and her mom first checked into the motel, but she had waited to write them until after the rodeo. That way she could tell everybody how good the Wrangler Riders had been.

“I know how you’ll start them,” her mom had said, teasing her. “Today was the best day of my life. I was wonderful!”

“Oh, Mom,” Maggie had said, but she did like the first part. “Today was the best day of my life.”

The four cards were lined in front of her on the desk. All were glorified views of the Bar None Motel. The blue pool looked Olympic size. The tables around it had umbrellas. There were enough flowers to open a nursery.

Maggie had started all four of her cards, but not the way she had planned. This had been the best day of her life, but it had also been the worst. Therefore, all she had written so far were Dear Vern, Dear Pap, Dear Junior, and Dear Ralphie.

“You won’t mind eating by yourself, will you, shug,” her mother had said. She had been in the bathroom, at the mirror, painting her eyelids green.

“You can run right across the street to Bojangle’s or next door to the Bar-B-Q Barn. You still have some money left from that five I gave you this afternoon, don’t you?”

“Yes, but why can’t we have supper together?”

“I promised the girls I’d eat with them.”

“The girls?”

“The girls and whoever else wants to join us, I guess. Maggie, you know how rodeo people like to get together.” She poked her head out of the bathroom to give Maggie a disappointed look. One eyelid was green, the other plain. “I never thought you would want me to miss a good time.”

“Mom, we could have a good time together. We could go to a movie.”

Her mom stepped back into the bathroom. When she was out of sight she called, “It’s already settled. Cody Gray’s picking me up.” She stepped into Maggie’s view with both eyelids green.

A horn honked twice outside the door. “There he is.” She hesitated, then said, “Maggie, come on out and congratulate him.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Please, shug, I want you two to get to know each other.”

“No, Mom.”

“You sure have gotten hard to get along with.” She gave Maggie a disappointed look, and then she opened the motel door and broke into a smile.

Maggie crossed quickly to the window. She yanked aside the drape to watch her mother getting into the silver convertible.

In one motion, Vicki Blossom opened the car door, slid in, and hugged Cody Gray so hard she knocked his hat off his head. Maggie couldn’t hear what Cody said because the motel air conditioner clicked on at that exact moment, but it made them both laugh.

Her mother looked up then, still laughing, and pointed to Maggie in the window. She waved. Maggie whipped the drapes shut.

Ever since they’d driven off, Maggie had been trying to write postcards. Once again she shifted them around on the desk. This time Ralphie’s ended up in front of her. That was good. She needed Ralphie’s special magic tonight.

Ralphie was her best friend. Ralphie could—he had proved this again and again—do anything. His specialty, he’d once said, was the impossible. She would have given anything in the world to have Ralphie walk in the motel door.

I wonder if I could call him, she thought. I wouldn’t say anything about my mom, I’d just—

With a sigh she began to write.

I wish you could have been at the rodeo. You’re good luck. I never fall when you’re watching. Well, I didn’t fall today, but I did have a little bad luck. Mom says I can stay next week too, but I may come on home on the bus.

She hesitated, vaguely dissatisfied with what she had written. She wanted to do it over. The trouble was, she had already written the names on the other cards. Well, it would have to do.

She read the message again. Then she thought about whether she should sign it “Love, Maggie” or “Your friend, Maggie.” Finally she figured out that if she added one more line, the postcard would be full and she wouldn’t have to commit herself.

“See you soon,” she wrote, “Maggie Blossom.” Now, for some reason, she was even more dissatisfied. Maybe I could squeeze the word “love” in right there, she thought. She did squeeze it in, but now the card was ruined. The word “love” stood out. She had written it small, but for some reason it had turned out to be the biggest word on the whole card.

She looked at the remaining cards, and then she did what she had felt like doing from the first, swept them all into the trashcan. She threw down her pen. She put her head in her hands.

Maggie was more unsettled than she had ever been in her life. Maggie hated her mother.

For a long time Maggie had never understood how anybody could dislike their parents. She had thought kids at school who claimed they did were just exaggerating. She could never hate her mother. Her mother was like a wonderful older sister.

Maggie lifted her head. Her eyes were slits in her sunburned face.

“She ruined everything,” she said aloud. “This could have been the best day of my entire life, and she ruined it!”