Last year there’d been a wreck a mile from his place, and the sheriff needed his tractor to pull one of the cars out of a ditch. Another time he’d had to house a carload of teenagers who’d run out of gas a quarter mile from his place. Since it wasn’t an emergency, and the roads were freezing over, the sheriff thought they could sleep in his barn. He’d said, “I would have them sleep in the car, but there’s no telling what would happen with six high school kids in one dark car. We’d probably have ourselves a mini-Woodstock on our hands. One of the mothers said if her daughter got any wilder, they’d have to lock her up in a zoo.”
Jesse had smiled while he walked down to the car that night. Then he laughed all the way back. The kids were all blaming each other for the gas problem and by the time he settled them on the hay in the barn, none of them were speaking.
LeRoy broke into his memories. “We got hard rain, and more coming, over here in Honey Creek.”
Jesse already knew that.
“The creeks are bursting their banks and the Brazos might overflow. The three hotels in town are full.” LeRoy paused. “We can’t use the lodge. It’s too close to the river. If the creek floods, the Brazos might be next and that’ll flood all the way to the edge of town. The river side of Honey Creek could be under water.”
Jesse waited as he tried to think how he could help. Both grandmothers were on high ground.
LeRoy kept yelling into the phone as if Jesse suddenly went deaf. “I’ll fill all the homes that can take people who are stranded out on the low side of the county road. The church said they could offer fifty beds. Only problem is some of these folks want to bring their animals. You know how it is around here, every person who has three acres thinks they need a horse. We can handle dogs and cats, but we’re not prepared for horses. How many can you take at your place? No one will blink at a charge of thirty dollars a night. Your land is so high up, I’ll start building an ark if it floods.”
“I’ll give them the first night free to help out.” Jesse reasoned aloud. “By then they’ll know if their land will flood.”
LeRoy laughed. “I remember that big barn of yours. Thanks for helping me out.”
“I can take a dozen in the stalls and I’ll rig up another six with the panels if we need to.”
“Great. Be ready by tomorrow and pray nothing happens. We may just get rain, but we’re going to be ready if trouble comes.”
When Jesse hung up, he was wide-awake. He glanced at the kitchen clock. Four thirty. Might as well get up. After that nightmare he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go to sleep again.
If Adalee put that dream in his head to warn him to stay away, it worked.
Chapter 16
Marcie
Sunday was usually Marcie’s day to do laundry and clean the trailer. For the first time in months, she’d had a great night’s sleep after Brand put dead-bolt locks on both doors and fixed the window. Even the rain didn’t keep her awake.
She hadn’t heard anything from Joey or the other men who’d tried to pay her a visit two nights ago. They might be laying low thinking Brand, if not Marcie, might have turned them in. No one in the trailer park would be surprised at what they’d tried to do to her. None of her neighbors would get involved, either. With half the trailers abandoned, left to decay, she no longer had a neighbor within yelling distance.
As far as she knew, she was the only woman in the park without a man living with her, except Momma B. Everyone called the three-time widow Momma B and no one messed with her. She’d raised six kids and was stronger and meaner than most men. Word was she killed her last no-good husband. Apparently, he hit her with a bat and she hit him with a bullet. Her kids helped bury him in the woods and no one called the sheriff over in Honey Creek.
No one would protect her from the wolves, Marcie thought, and she couldn’t run to Brand for help every time she was afraid. She barely knew him, even though she’d felt the warmth of his arms as she dreamed last night.
Maybe it was time to leave the trailer park. The bad memories weren’t worth keeping. Maybe she could sell the trailer for a few dollars. All that was keeping her here was her job at the bar, and that wasn’t much.
Wayne, who owned Bandit’s Bar, told her she could borrow his car all day Sunday if she’d promise to clean up next Friday night for free. It seemed a fair trade. Half the time on weekends he was too drunk to remember to lock the bar up, much less clean up. On those nights she’d stay and pick up until she walked him to his car. Since he lived a half mile down the dirt road behind the bar, he wasn’t likely to run into anyone at two in the morning.
As she tied her dark hair into a ponytail, she sang softly. It was time to get on with life. Everyone would forget about her past in twenty or thirty years, but right now she needed to start taking better care of herself.
Step one: Get enough money to fix her car.
Step two: Find a safe place to live.
Step three: Start living.
A rainy day was as good a time as any to start. She’d been saving all she could, but it still wasn’t enough for repairs on the car, so her next place would have to be within walking distance.
There were three possible choices she might be able to move into. One was a garage apartment at an old lodge a few miles down by the river. It would be quiet in the winter and in the summer the owner said she could earn her rent by cleaning rooms.
The second spot was renting a room in a two-story house a few hundred feet behind the bar. The street wasn’t paved, but the house was big. It was built about fifty years ago when folks thought Someday Valley would become a real town like Honey Creek or Clifton Bend. Someone had built a line of homes that faced the river. Folks said they were beautiful, and to her they still were. A promise of what Someday Valley could have become, a reminder of better days.
The old woman who owned the fourth house from the river already rented to three other women. Marcie would have a bedroom, a bath down the hall, and use of the kitchen if she cleaned up after herself. It was cheap and close to her weekend job.
The third place she might stay was a last-chance possibility, a chicken farm halfway to Honey Creek. A cluster of what would be called tiny houses nowadays had been built years ago for workers at the farm.
Now, young couples had taken them over. They’d painted them bright colors and built a front yard for all in the center of the circle. It was noisy and smelled of too many chickens, but the rent was reasonable. Problem was, the farm was too far for her to walk to the bar, so she’d have to have her car fixed. The mini-town looked peaceful. Sheets flapping on clotheslines and toddlers playing on grass in the center of the compound.
If she fixed the car, she wouldn’t have money for the security deposit on a little house. If she put money down for a six-month lease, she couldn’t pay for repairs unless she sold the trailer fast.
The ifs in her plan outnumbered the possibilities.
Her brother hadn’t answered his phone the last three times she’d called, so no telling when he’d wander by again. When he did come home, he was usually down on his luck, so she couldn’t plan on any help from him.
By full dawn Marcie walked through mud in the sleeping trailer park. It looked almost peaceful so early in the day, but she knew it was time to move on. She’d stayed too long. The few good memories she’d had here had been washed away by the bad. She had to get a day job, keep her night job, then she’d pack up, leave here, and never look back.