Jeff Abbott: Promises of Home

Don’t get me wrong. I love children. Well-behaved children. In the “Look What’s New” bin I’m always displaying books on child discipline and the virtues of celibacy. But they just don’t seem to move. I might try personally recommending selected titles to folks who should reconsider adding to their brood in the future.

To my never-ending astonishment, Gretchen lives for Story Day. She wanders among the future embezzlers and spouse cheaters, sweetly cautioning them to “put that down” or “don’t put that in your mouth.” She insists on the little darlings calling her “Aunt Gretchen” and me (shudder) “Uncle Jordan.” It might be easier if a lot of the mothers stayed for Story Day (and several of the sainted ones do), but too many moms see it as the Friday babysitting service and duck out to shop or have lunch or meet some trucker out at the Highway 71 motel (also known as the Mirabeau Mattress) for a little midday epic of their own.

Either Gretchen reads stories to the assembly, or Miss Ludey Murchison does. Miss Ludey’s certifiably insane, in my opinion, but she likes children. And they love her. She’s around eighty and has a wonderful reading voice that is frequently broken by coughing or gasps for air. I’ve tried to break her of her occasional habit of chomping pears while she recites, but she says she needs her vitamins. Fortunately I know both Heimlich and CPR, so our bases are covered.

A huddle of pint-sized literati swarmed around my knees as I worked my way across the room. I’m convinced the large number of children in Mirabeau is a direct result of the town’s limited entertainment options. People really should read more.

“I did a doodie,” a diaper-clad individual of undetermined gender informed me. The speaker straddled my shoe while making this announcement.

I moved my foot back. “How nice.” I smiled encouragingly. “Go tell Aunt Gretchen. I’m sure she’ll be interested.”

The child tottered off, its balance suddenly at risk. Lord give me strength. I honestly didn’t expect the day could go further south. Until, that is, Trey Slocum wheeled himself into my library and I felt the cold hardness of hate enter my heart.

When I was a senior at rice university, I went to a friend’s Halloween party. His family was a large, rambunctious Louisiana clan and they’d gone all out, festooning the house with goblins and ghouls and sticky, fake cobwebs. They provided an open bar and a couple of fortune-tellers. My friend’s great-aunt was one of the holiday seers, a drunken old woman who in hindsight was pathetic but at the time seemed terribly amusing. We all must’ve been drunk not to pity her. She was laying out ta-rot cards between generous gulps of red wine, and as she tossed a card toward me it spun flat across the table, whirling a hanged man’s picture. I flicked at the card’s corner, snickering, and made it twirl back across the smooth cherrywood tabletop. The old lady’s hand had lashed out, catching my wrist in a death grip.

“Don’t you laugh at fortune, little boy, and don’t you make it spin,” she hissed at me, the smell of cheap grape heavy on her breath. “Fortune always spins back around in good time. There’s no need for you to jostle the wheel.”

I quieted at this unexpected pronouncement, and my date pulled me away from the table to dance to the latest Depeche Mode song. I’d never forgotten what that drunken lady had said to me, though.

God, did Fortune spin around.

Before Trey came in, I was helping two new patrons: an attractive but rough-looking woman in her midthirties, and an intense young man, around thirteen. Judging by her hearty, ruddy complexion and weathered hands, the woman apparently spent a lot of time outdoors. She had brown hair that would have been beautiful if she’d just left it alone; instead she’d teased and moussed the front of it so hard it resembled a rabbit’s frizzy tail. I’d noticed her eyes, too-chocolate-brown ones, clear and intelligent. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but when you live in a town where some of the same families have lived for generations, you aren’t surprised by nagging thoughts that you may have met someone before.

“You ain’t the librarian,” she politely said after telling me her son wanted to get a card. Her eyes appraised me frankly and she had a crooked, sexy smile. “You don’t got gray hair and a gingham dress.”

“Not today. I only wear the gingham on Wednesdays.” I pulled out a blank form for her and the boy to fill out. “I’m Jordan Poteet.”

“Well, hello. I’m Nola Kinnard, and this is my son, Scott,” the woman answered. Her son was around my nephew Mark’s age, a plain-looking, brown-haired boy with a shy demeanor, a pug nose, and clear hazel eyes. He mumbled a quiet hello and offered his hand after his mother gently elbowed him, giving me a curt handshake.

While Scott puzzled over the form Nola Kinnard chatted about how much she enjoyed being back in Mirabeau. I glanced away from her and that was when I saw Trey Slocum, in a wheelchair, easing himself through the front door.

My whole body iced, held cold for a minute, then began a quick thaw as shock and anger heated me. Shock that he was in a wheelchair and anger that he was even in town.

He didn’t see me at first; he was examining the posters I’d made to advertise the kids’ Christmas-break reading program. Nola Kinnard still prattled at her son; her voice sounded as far away as though she were on the other side of the river. Slowly, I turned to her and said, “I’m sorry. What?” My own voice, usually a little raspy, was hardly more than a croak.

“How many books can he check out? Scott’s had to go quite a spell without reading and he wants to catch up.”

“I like the Dune books.” Scott spoke up finally for himself. His voice stood on the edgy brink of change. “I only got through the first couple before we left Beaumont and I-”

I’m sure there was more, and if I’d been in my normal mind I would have gladly listened. Finding a teenager who enjoys reading is gold in my book. But my eyes left Scott and Nola and went back to Trey, whose gloved hands were poised above the wheels of his chair. He was staring at me, stock-still in his own shock.

Nola Kinnard glanced to where I was looking and said, “Oh, honey, I thought you were going to wait in the car.” She narrowed her eyes at me, appalled at my rude ogling at a crippled man. She didn’t have a clue.

“Honey?” I heard myself repeating her words, and my voice sounded as dulled as an old knife. “You know that man?”

She looked startled at my tone. “Well, sure. Do you know Trey?”

“Jordy, my God.” Trey pulled up his chair across the floor and stopped a few feet short of me. He looked much the same as the last time I saw him, six years ago: cham-bray shirt, glossy black hair under a cowboy hat, twilight-dark eyes, fancy boots, a mustache and beard. But the patch of chest underneath the open V of the shirt looked wasted, the legs in the boots seemed atrophied under the jeans, and the skin behind the beard shone sallow. He smiled thinly at me. “My God, what are you doing here, Jordy? I didn’t know you were back in town-”

I found my voice. “Hello, Trey.” I made myself look at his face and not the wheelchair.

“Well, how nice!” Nola perked up. “Are you old friends?”

“We were, once,” I answered before Trey could-I wanted the record straight. My hands gripped the edge of the counter. “Trey used to be my brother-in-law. I take it you’re with him?”

Nola looked confused. “Yes, I’m with Trey… your brother-in-law?”

“Jordy, maybe you and I should step outside and talk.” Trey’s voice was low.

I raised an eyebrow. Oh, God help me, I wanted to beat the crap out of this man. Even if it was in front of a woman and boy he’d taken as his own. I sensed a presence near my elbow: Gretchen. I heard the faint drone of Miss Ludey reading “Rumpelstiltskin” to the children. “And no one knows my name!” she said in a guttural voice tinged with evil. Then Gretchen broke through the stony tension.