Good Hope Road (27 page)

“Don’t say that! Don’t you say that.” Melanie leaned closer to him, her eyes filled with fire. “
My baby girl
is out there.
My baby girl
is coming home.” She clutched the picture to her chest and started toward the door with the sheriff’s deputy following. “If this picture can make it through the tornado, so can she.”

 

 

I
noticed little Jenilee standing there as I handed a stack of pictures up the ladder to Dr. Albright. “Well, good mornin’, Jenilee,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. She just stared at the Taylor family, who were chuckling together over some pictures from last year’s Halloween carnival. Caleb Baker was helping them take down some of the higher ones.

“Good mornin’, Jenilee,” I repeated, walking closer to her.

“I can’t believe all the pictures . . .” she muttered, but I wasn’t sure she was talking to me. She seemed in a daze, staring at the wall with them big brown eyes glittering. A tear spilled over and traced a line down her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Well, don’t cry about it,” I said. “You done a good thing here.” I slipped in beside her and squeezed her shoulders, even though I knew she wouldn’t like it. I wanted to hug somethin’, and she was the only thing close enough.

“It’s . . . wonderful,” she whispered, loud enough so that only I could hear. “It’s just the way I dreamed about it.”

“Well, that must have been a good dream.” I give her another squeeze, and to my surprise, she laid her head on my shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world. “It’s a help to folks. They come in, and they look for their pictures, and they read that old letter, and when they go out, they feel some hope.”

“It’s perfect,” she breathed, watching the old letter twitter in the breeze like a leaf barely clinging to a tree.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed, laying my head on top of hers. Right then at that moment, she felt like one of my own. “It’s perfect.”

She stood there with me for a minute, quiet and still. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to break the spell.

A car door banged outside, and she jerked upright. She moved away from me as Caleb come by and offered to take the bag out of her hands.

“All right,” she said, and let him take the bag away to June’s bed to dump it out for sorting.

“No one came for the old letter?” she asked.

“Nobody yet,” I said. “But it brought comfort to a lot of folks, so maybe it’s meant to be here for a while. It’s easy to get to dwelling on what you’ve lost. All the physical things, I mean. Sometimes folks forget that what really matters is the love you got in you, and there’s not a storm in the world that can blow that away. I think that’s what the letter says.”

“I think so too,” she whispered, running her hands up and down her arms like she had a chill, even though the morning was already warm. Her gaze traveled along the wall until it reached the ladder, and she saw Dr. Albright.

The look on her face made me chuckle. “Must be some kind of divine grace in this wall,” I said. “It’s even got Dr. Always Right up on the ladder hanging pictures.”

Jenilee smiled, a little dimple forming where her cheeks blushed pink. “How did you get him to do that?”

I shrugged, not quite sure myself. “He just come up yesterday when I was getting started on this, and I put him to work. He come back this morning with a ladder, ready to help again.”

She looked around the room, her sandy brows knotting in the center. “Doc Howard’s still not back?”

“Still in the hospital, but just as a precaution. Mrs. Howard said they weren’t takin’ no chances.”

Jenilee looked worried. “I hope he’s all right.”

“Anyhow, Dr. Always Right—oh, heck, I mean Albright—is lookin’ after things for now, though there ain’t much to do since they carried everyone off to the hospitals.”

“That’s good,” she muttered, but I could tell she wasn’t really listening to me. “Are there more pictures? I can’t stay long, because I have to get back to go with Nate and Drew to the hospital, but I could start hanging some pictures up on the back wall. Maybe we could stand some pieces of plywood or something up in here to give us more space.”

“I think that’s a fine idea,” I told her. I thought about asking after her daddy, but I didn’t know how she’d feel about that, and I didn’t want to upset her. “There’s bags by the door. We been just dumpin’ things out on the floor, and tryin’ to sort out things that belong together, and pull apart the ones that are wet so they can dry. If we know who they go to, sometimes we just keep them in a pile to pass along, but mostly it’s all shuffled like cards. You just have to hang things up and let folks come look.”

I clapped my hands together, startling her. “Well, I guess we ought to get to work,” I said. “Why don’t you go over there and see if the ladies have some more pictures sorted for Dr. Albright to hang up high on the wall?”

“All right.” Jenilee combed her blond hair back from her face, looking happy to have something to do. When she smiled like that, the littlest twist of her lips, she looked so sweet I wanted to hug her again.

She got away before I had the chance. She hurried over to the garden club ladies, and in a minute she was back with a stack of pictures and other things. She walked to the bottom of the ladder and stood there holding them, not sure what to do.

“Doc!” I hollered as I went along the wall filling spaces where people had pulled off pictures and taken them home. “There’s another stack of pictures for ya.”

The doc turned and looked over his shoulder. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Jenilee for a moment.

She climbed the bottom two steps of the ladder and held the pictures up, fidgeting while she waited for him to come down to get them.

I paused in what I was doing and stood there watching the two of them, wondering again what in the world that city doctor could be thinking, and why he looked at her that way.

He smiled and sat on the step a few rungs above her, like he thought to be there for a minute or two. He didn’t take the papers from her hands. “How are you this morning, Jenilee?”

“Fine.” She pushed the stack of papers upward. “Here. These are ready to be hung up.”

He smiled and leaned down a little, tryin’ to get her to look at him. “You know, you started a good thing here. People come in looking shell-shocked. The pictures give them a sense that things will eventually get back to some kind of order.”

I took a step closer, so he would know I was listening. I felt pretty protective of Jenilee, and if that city doctor had in mind to flirt with a girl half his age, I wanted him to know this was a good, Christian town and we didn’t let that kind of thing go on. A few years back, we run a basketball coach out of town for doing that same thing. If I ever got that doctor alone again, I thought maybe I’d tell him what we done to that coach.

“Thanks,” Jenilee said, and ducked her head. “Well, here are some more pictures.” And she tried again to give him the bundle.

He pretended to be busy finding the end of the tape. He knew if he took the pictures, she would scoot out of there. “I may not have said it yesterday,” he told her, his voice so soft I could barely hear it, “but I want to thank you for your help. You did a good job.”

She looked up, gaping at him, like she didn’t know what to say. “Well . . . I . . . ummm . . . thanks.”

“You have a natural talent for healing,” he said. “I’ve seen med students who couldn’t have done as well as you did.”

Jenilee smiled a little, seeming to relax. “Thanks,” she said. “But it was stuff anybody could do.”

The doctor shook his head, pointing a finger at her. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said, then put his hands over hers and slowly took the bundle of pictures from her fingers. “Some people have an inborn gift for medicine. It’s something that can’t be learned. It just happens. You have a way of keeping people calm in a crisis, of making them believe you can help.”

Jenilee wrinkled her forehead, almost like she thought he was making fun of her, or like she couldn’t believe someone would say such a thing about her. She looked at him for a long minute, wondering whether or not to believe him.

“I spent a lot of years working at the vet clinic,” she told him. “Then when Mama got sick, I spent most of my time taking care of her.” She paused thoughtfully, looking up at him. “I guess that’s where I learned it.”

Dr. Albright smiled. “A gift like that comes from the heart. You can’t learn it. You have a gift, Jenilee. You should do something with it.”

Jenilee shrugged. “I guess I’d better get some more pictures.” Shaking off the compliment like a dog shaking off water, she stepped down the ladder.

“Jenilee, why don’t you go over and help Caleb and June sort that bag of pictures you brung in?” I suggested, thinking it might be good to get her away from that city doctor, since I couldn’t tell quite what he was up to.

“All right,” she said, then walked over and sat on the floor beside Caleb, who was holding up an old, yellowed picture, showing it to June.

I watched them laughing together, the town drunk, the chubby class clown, and the girl nobody ever noticed, and I thought what a strange grouping they made.

I reminded myself that everything was different now, and I needed to forget my old ways of thinking.

Everything’s changed, and all the things you thought were so ain’t so anymore, Eudora,
I reminded myself
. It’s the Lord’s way of showing who is really leading this wagon train. In your life, you been a little stubborn about turning over the reins. . . .

I walked closer to see what they were talking about. Caleb wrapped his arm around his belly, laughing as he held up an old black-and-white picture. “Look at this old picture of the Poetry baseball team. Look, there’s Mr. Jaans with his baseball pants pulled up to his armpits.”

Beside him, Jenilee giggled. “I think these pictures are probably yours, Mrs. Gibson. Drew and I found them near your house.”

June let out a little cough, snatching the picture from Caleb. “I’ll have you young folks know I was the finest pitcher the Poetry baseball team ever seen. Ninety-mile-per-hour fastball. At least.”

He set down the picture and held up another one. “Now here, if you’ll look at this old picture of the 1940 Poetry Watermelon Festival Parade, I think you’ll see someone you recognize here in the queen’s court. This one right here, don’t that lady-in-waiting look a little like Miss Eudora . . . ? Well, it wasn’t Gibson, then; it was Miss Eudora Crawford. And now, if you’ll look beside her, Jenilee, you might recognize the Watermelon Queen here, or the handsome Watermelon King. Those are your grandparents.”

Jenilee leaned closer to look at the picture, a little gasp passing her lips and her eyes widening. “Those are my grandparents? I barely remember what they looked like, and not so young, anyway. We didn’t have any pictures. Daddy wouldn’t let—” She stopped, realizing what she was saying.

June didn’t notice. He just went on yammering about the past. “And this lady-in-waiting here. This is your grandma’s sister, Bernice. She’d be your great-aunt. She married a Vongortler and lived in Hindsville. You know, you still got some kin over there, I think.”

Jenilee sat back, blinking like she couldn’t take it all in. “I didn’t know my grandma had any sisters. Mama never said anything.”

“Oh, sure she did. Lordy, your grandma was from a family of five or six kids. Can’t quite remember for sure.” He glanced at Caleb. “Caleb, you ask your granddad about it. He’s the preacher over there to Hindsville. He’ll know the whereabouts of Bernice Vongortler’s kids and grandkids. Jenilee might want to look them up someday. Family’s important, even long-lost family.”

Jenilee sat staring at the picture, her brown eyes getting wider and wider. I felt bad that I hadn’t thought to tell her she might still have kinfolk over Hindsville way. I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that she didn’t know any of her mama’s family.

June went on pointing out people. “And look here in the contestants’ row, with the big scowl on her face. That is Mazelle Sibley, mad because she didn’t get picked for the Watermelon Court. And look right here, the Watermelon Princess with the pretty gray eyes and the dark hair, that’s Iv—”

I had snatched the picture out of his hand before I realized what I was doing. “Stop that!” I hissed.
How dare he say Ivy’s name!

Jenilee and Caleb gaped at me in surprise, but I didn’t care. They might not of known what was going on, but June knew.

“Nobody wants to hear that old business,” I snapped, tossing the pictures on the side of the pile. “And them ain’t my pictures. I wouldn’t have them pictures.”

June lowered his chin, looking hurt. I didn’t care. Silence lay over us like a thick, musty old blanket.

Jenilee pushed it aside finally. “I found another letter,” she said quietly, reaching into the pile and taking out a piece of paper. “I guess I’ll go hang it up with the first one.”

She stood up and walked to the wall.

Caleb hopped to his feet, ready to be out of there. “I guess I better go see if . . . they need any help down at the motor home.”

I glared at June. “You got no right to say her name,” I spat; then I walked away to where Jenilee stood by the wall.

I squinted at the writing on the ancient paper as she hung it up. “What does the letter say? I ain’t got my reading glasses on.”

Jenilee paused for a minute, her eyes meeting mine, filled with meaning. “It says you have to leave the past behind to start a new life.”

I turned away from the letter, bitterness welling up inside me. If she’d understood all that had happened in the past, she wouldn’t of said that.

“Do you think that’s possible?” she whispered, her eyes desperate for an answer. “I mean, do you think a person can walk away from everything that’s happened before and be somebody new? Somebody different?”