The Prayer Box, page 18
The bus rumbled by a few minutes later as I was crossing the yard, moving like an overloaded pack mule, with one bag slung over my back and another dangling from my arm. I’d stuffed them full, and they were getting longer by the minute, the plastic stretching and growing translucent. “Please don’t break.” If they did, I’d have moldy SpaghettiOs and rotten apples all over me. I had cleaned out the refrigerator, while trying not to gag up my lunch, and the bins were drying on the counter now.
“My eye, it looks like Santy Claus is a-comin’!” Brother Guilbeau’s voice was easy to recognize, even without looking up. Rather than run the risk of stopping, I continued my trudge toward the Dumpster.
“You don’t want these presents, trust me!” The next thing I knew, I was smiling under my pack, my ribs convulsing in withheld laughter. I could just imagine what I looked like.
“You don’ got a mess’a fried crawfish in that pack for a hungry man?” Brother Guilbeau teased, his tone as casual as if we were old friends who talked every day. His feet moved through the grass with a shuffling swish-swish.
“There’s some stuff in there that might’ve been crawfish once.” I made it to the Dumpster—thank goodness—and rolled the heavier bag off my back. “But I’m not making any promises. You can dig for it if you want.”
He grinned, craning his neck forward and pretending to consider the bags of trash. I pulled my hands away, offering to surrender them. I liked Brother Guilbeau, despite the fact that my experiences with church people in the past hadn’t always been the best. He seemed different. Maybe there came a point in life where you had to quit categorizing whole groups of people by a few bad experiences.
I grabbed a bag, pitching it into the air with a Hail Mary swing. It sailed over the Dumpster rim and landed inside with a gushy plop. Brother Guilbeau reached for the second bag, but I snatched it up and threw it in as well. “My hands are already dirty.”
“Sha, you pretty strong for a little thing.” Brother Guilbeau was impressed.
“I’ve schlepped a few hay bales and feed sacks in my day,” I said, feeling strangely pleased with myself.
Brother Guilbeau nodded. “Your boy, he was tellin’ me his mama was a horse rider. Jumpin’ horses, was it?”
A pang of surprise hit me, sudden and sharp like when my daddy would flick a finger and thump me in the head for not obeying quickly enough. “Yes, but not for a long time now.” The answer was intentionally vague. Had Brother Guilbeau been pumping J.T. for information?
He seemed to guess at my thoughts. “Couple horse riders went by in the woods the other day while we were sharin’ us an Icee out back of Bink’s store. He mentioned his mama rode jumpers.”
“He likes animals,” I said blandly and then turned the conversation to the need for more trash bags, finally finishing with “I really didn’t want to come by the church and ask since you’d told me to keep my work here kind of quiet. I don’t know any of the history involved, but I get the impression that some people didn’t like Iola . . . and that there may be some issues about ownership of the house.” I was the one fishing for information now. That still, small voice in my head was insisting, Tell him the roof needs attention. Now. What might happen if I did? “I just didn’t want to get in the middle of things and have everyone asking me questions about it. I won’t know what to say to them.” A load of guilt was quickly settling on my shoulders. I knew I was wimping out on getting help for the house, opting for self-preservation instead.
Brother Guilbeau pulled out his wallet, thumbed through bills, and handed me a fifty. “Yes, mmm-hmm, I see that point. I do, sha. Less said, better till we got all the legal mumbo jumbo cleared up.”
My first thought as I took the money was that I’d be able to buy gas to get to work tomorrow. Then I wanted to bash my head against the Dumpster. I would not do that. I wouldn’t. I’d find some other way to get gas money. Like being honest with Sandy and admitting that I needed an advance.
“Now, you do any drivin’ around for the supplies, you use some a’ that to pay the gas,” Brother Guilbeau instructed, and my mouth fell open. “My mistake, I didn’t get some cash money over there to you sooner on. Been a busy week round here.”
“Oh . . . that’s okay,” I stammered, goose bumps pricking over my skin.
Brother Guilbeau checked his watch. “Got potluck and music t’night here at the church.” He was already angling in the direction of his car, on his way to somewhere. “C’mon join us, bring that boy. Bring his big sister, too. Haven’t had much chance to talk to her, but that boy loves his big sister.”
“Oh . . . well, we’d better not, but thank you.” The excuse spun off my tongue like silk. “I have a new job—just temporary, but I think I’ll be crashing early tonight. I’m doing some drywall work at a shop down in Hatteras Village.”
“Drywall?” Brother Guilbeau’s eyes bugged. “Well, my foot! You didn’t tell me you knew how to put up drywall.”
I explained to him that I’d been working with my father on construction jobs since I was little. I almost cycled around to bringing up the problems in Iola’s house, but fear won out again.
“Lotta folks round here need that kind a’ work right now. You decide you want to do more, you make me some signs wit’ your phone number, I’ll share them in town, tell ever’body we got a new home handywoman.” He was walking backward now, checking his watch again.
“Thanks . . . oh, okay . . . thanks!” I waved at him, the fifty-dollar bill still dangling from my fingers.
He spun around and hurried off to his car, and I walked back toward Iola’s house with a new wind in my sails. Home handywoman . . . me? I’d never, ever considered that all those times my father had kept me out of school to drive him to jobs might actually come in handy for something. Maybe I really could start some kind of business. Brother Guilbeau seemed to think I could.
The funny thing about having people believe good things about you is that, without even realizing it, you want to make those things true. I wanted to be the person Brother Guilbeau saw, the person Sandy saw. I wanted to be worthy of their trust. This place, this house, everything about it was changing me. The prayer boxes, the grace water was slipping inside me like vapor, the life water of a different person, of someone completely new. The more I breathed it in, the more it filled me. The more I dipped my toe in Iola’s river of grace, the more it washed away the stains of the past.
Laughing, I threw my head back and my arms out and drank in the day as I walked back to the house. I wanted to savor this feeling, to keep it.
A horn honked and I opened my eyes, my poetry moment shattering all around me.
Ross’s truck was rolling in. Behind the wheel, he was grinning ear to ear. I blushed, picturing myself standing there in the yard in my old jeans and T-shirt, my arms thrown out and my head tossed back. I must’ve looked like some kind of a drunken ballet dancer.
Ross hopped out of the truck still laughing, and my heart fluttered upward at the sight of him. It was almost impossible to remember from one time to the next how good-looking he really was. He was a magazine photo in the flesh—the cover of Sports Illustrated.
“Hey, babe!” He crossed the yard and swept me up with one arm, his broad smile telling me that, whatever he’d been doing, it had been a good day. He looked tanned, rested, and happy. “I’ve got eighteen hours and forty-two minutes before the old man sends me off to Natchez with a load. Let’s go have some fun.”
He set me on my feet and kissed me, and for a minute I lost track of where I was—and everything else.
CHAPTER 16
ROSS WAS TRYING TO TALK me into going down to Ocracoke Island for the night. There was a party brewing at one of his favorite dives, and then he was crashing overnight at the little saltbox house he seldom used.
His fingers toyed with the ends of my hair as he smiled down at me, his eyes twinkling. “Man, you haven’t seen a beach until you’ve seen the one by that house. You’ll like it. You can meet my dog. Mama said if I didn’t come get him out of her yard, she was gonna call the pound, so I put him at the Ocracoke house. Anyway, you’ll love the place, and the sunrise is awesome there.”
“Like you’ll be seeing the sunrise after playing pool all night.” I’d been out with Ross enough times to know how the evening would go. He would play pool, gather an audience, and entertain everyone with epic stories from his two-day bender in Salvo. In the morning I’d wake up on Ocracoke, a forty-minute ferry ride away from Hatteras and my new job at Sandy’s.
The strange thing was that not so long ago, I would’ve been jumping at the chance, a giddy feeling fluttering up, my body warm with the fact that Ross didn’t want to leave home without me. Being his arm candy had been a confidence booster like crazy, and I’d craved that. But today, all I could think about were the issues with Iola’s house and the fact that Sandy needed me to show up in the morning. The Ocracoke ferry had been closed due to shoaling more often than it had been open lately. What if I got stuck down there?
I heard J.T. talking to Zoey as they crossed the salt meadow, and I pushed away from Ross. “The kids are coming.”
Ross listened a moment. Then his lashes fell to half-mast, and he leaned close to me. “Sounds like both of them, so we’re good to go. Tell Big Sister she’s got to stay home and babysit tonight. We’ll head out, catch the ferry, and hit happy hour at Rob and Roy’s—get a bite before the round-robin pool tournament. You can watch me work my magic.”
“Ross, I should . . .”
“C’mon,” he teased. “You can have all the money. Everything I win. You’re my good luck charm. They’re all too busy looking at you to pay any attention to the table. We’ll hit one of the shops on the way, get you something really . . . distracting to wear. You need some new clothes, Tandi. You’re way too hot for jeans and junk T-shirts.”
The pull of old habits tugged hard. He made the evening sound a whole lot more fun than I’d pictured it.
“I can’t,” I said finally. On top of everything else, the clouds were rumbling somewhere off over the water. If more storms blew in tonight, I’d have to do my best to make sure the drip buckets were in all the right places in Iola’s house. I thought about telling Ross the truth, but instead, I settled for “I have to work in the morning.”
“Work?” He drew back, flashing an eyetooth. “What?”
“The drywall thing at Sandy’s Seashell Shop?” Sometimes I wondered if he listened to me at all. “Remember, I told you about that?”
J.T. came through the hedge with Zoey behind him. I could tell from a distance that she wasn’t happy.
“I thought you were kidding. You’re hanging drywall? Really?” Ross was so clueless. “Well, let it wait a day, till after I’m gone. What’re they gonna do about it? It’s not like they can find somebody else. That’s why Dad’s chapping me about all the rental houses. He can’t get any construction help.”
“I can’t just . . . go off and leave the kids.”
Ross braced his hands on his belt. “You leave the kids all the time, Tandi.” He turned and started across the porch. “You know what? There’s something goin’ on with you lately, and whatever it is, I’m sick of it. You either want to be with me or you don’t.”
The panic place inside me cracked open. You need to be nicer, it warned. You need to do what people want, or they’ll leave. “Ross, I do . . . I just . . .” Silhouetted there on the porch, Ross looked so much like my father, walking out the door again, leaving us behind. I felt sick. “I just can’t this time, okay?”
“Yeah, fine, whatever.” He brushed by the kids on his way down the stairs. Zoey ignored him.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I yelled after him. “Ross!” But he didn’t answer.
“Why bother?” Zoey snapped as she skirted me. “He’s a jerk. All guys are jerks.” She continued through the door and dropped her backpack on the floor with a loud thump. J.T. slid in behind her and headed for his room. He didn’t even hit the kitchen for food.
Zoey grabbed something out of the refrigerator, then slammed the door.
“What’s the matter?” I wasn’t ready to deal with more problems, but there they were, waiting in the form of an angry fourteen-year-old. “Did something happen with Rowdy?”
“Like you care,” she shot back. “You just wish Rowdy would dump me. You’re jealous because Rowdy’s family has a lot more money than we do. Of course, everybody has more money than we do.”
As usual lately, her venom was a splash in the face at first, a shock. Acid on bare skin. “Listen, I’m just asking because you came home by yourself and you seem mad. I thought you might want to talk about it or something.”
“I don’t.” Tossing a waterfall of dark hair over her shoulder, she rounded the kitchen corner, her narrow hips swinging gracefully past it. She had on another shirt I didn’t recognize. An Aéropostale. Expensive. It looked new.
“Zoey, stop. I don’t have the energy for this, okay? What happened at school today? What’s wrong?”
She whipped around, her lips pressed together in a hard line. “I want to go home. I hate it here. I miss Karlie.” Karlie was Zoey’s best friend back in Dallas. She lived in the little groundskeeper’s house on Trammel’s place. She and Zoey had worn a path between the two homes. Anytime they could, Zoey and J.T. stayed the night at Karlie’s. More nights than they should have, definitely, but things were easier that way. When I knew I had to leave, Karlie’s mother had helped me get out. I hoped Trammel never discovered that she had anything to do with it.
“And Jake,” Zoey added, softening for a moment. Jake was the boyfriend Zoey had left behind—sort of a nerdy, quiet kid who adored her, liked novels about dragons, and was nice to J.T. because they both played video games.
“I’m sorry, Zoey.” I wished I could turn back the clock and give her a different life—not take the job showing Trammel’s horses, not let myself be coaxed into moving my eight-year-old daughter and three-year-old son onto Trammel’s place, not agree to ride exclusively for him. Not put myself in the position to be drawn in, completely dependent after the accident happened. There were so many things I’d do differently, if I could go back.
I wasn’t sure what to say to Zoey. Who was I to give advice? “Don’t worry, okay? Things are going to be better for us here. They are. I know it.”
“Yeah,” Zoey muttered, then turned and walked down the hall. Surprisingly she went into J.T.’s room instead of her own. I heard them in there talking. It sounded like she was trying to get him to share his video game box. Life couldn’t be too bad if she was doing that. Maybe after I left her alone awhile, she’d tell me what had happened with Rowdy and why she was suddenly homesick for Dallas.
While they were holed up in J.T.’s room, I slipped over to Iola’s house and made sure all the drip buckets were in place. The air smelled like rain, and judging by the weather radar on TV, it wouldn’t be just a sprinkle this time.
Back in the cottage, I rummaged through the boxes of food from Iola’s house and came up with something for dinner. It would be good for Zoey if we could all sit down together for once, do the things that normal families do. Talk. Laugh. Share secrets.
The meal ended up being pancakes, leftover banana beignets, and frozen hash browns. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I set the table with the old stoneware dishes from the cabinet. The colorful pattern of apples, leaves, and branches made the table look cheerful, despite the lack of meat or anything resembling a normal main course. The kids wouldn’t care. They were always happy with pancakes. Before Zoey was nine, she knew how to make almost any kind of breakfast food she wanted. Looking at our supper now, I remembered the two of them, still innocent enough to watch me with expectation-filled eyes. They’d made a pancake meal, and they wanted me to come eat with them, but I was too hazed out to move. I could imagine their disappointment now, though I hadn’t seen it then.
I hadn’t even really seen them, I guessed. Not in years. Perhaps not in all of our years together. I’d been too busy gazing into the holes in myself and trying to find a way to fill them.
J.T. answered when I called down the hall. He poked his head out the door, his hand still tethered to a video game controller.
“Hey, come on, I fixed dinner.”
His face squeezed around a confused frown. “I’m not real hungry, ’kay? I ate a doughnut at Bink’s.” A quick wince and then, “We didn’t hang around there or anything.” The video game was beeping behind him, demanding attention. “I gotta go. Snakefish wants me to fight him in the Hall of Doom.”
He was already pushing the door closed as I started down the hall. “J.T., I said I fixed dinner. Tell Snakefish that the Hall of Doom can wait until later, and tell Zoey to come on too. What’re you two doing in there?”
He fidgeted impatiently. “Zoey went someplace.”
“Someplace?” I looked past him into the bedroom. “Where?”
His thin shoulders rose, then fell. “I dunno. She just said she was goin’ someplace, then she gave me my PS3 back.”
“Great.” So much for my big plan. While I was at Iola’s house, Zoey had flown the coop without saying a word. “She didn’t say where? Or when she’d be back?”
Another shrug, another longing glance over his shoulder toward the game system, which sounded like it was about to levitate off the floor. “Mom, I gotta go. Snakefish—”
“Tell Snakefish you’re busy!” I snapped, and J.T. jerked away, blinking at me. “Never mind. You know what, if nobody wants dinner, then . . . fine.” Frustrated, tired from the day, I turned and stalked back up the hall.
A minute later, I was grabbing silverware off the little table by the window, yanking open the kitchen drawer, throwing everything in, knives and forks landing in an indistinguishable mix.
When I went back for the plates, J.T. was sliding into a chair, his chin trembling, his eyes two big, blue baseballs. “I think I’m hungry . . . kinda,” he croaked out.
