The Scent of Lilacs (40 page)

David didn’t like the looks of the sky. It had steadily grown more ominous ever since he and Wes had talked. Gertrude Wilson had just told him the radio was putting out storm warnings for the whole county. David had gone up to her house to call Aunt Love and Zella, but her phone was out. She said she lost service nearly every time it thundered.

“You’d best stay here, Brother David, till the storm passes on,” Gertrude told him.

Gertrude was in her seventies, widowed these many years, but her daughter couldn’t talk her into moving to town. Miss Gertrude said if she had to live in one of those little shoe-box houses where you could practically reach out the window and hold your neighbor’s hand, she would just die on the spot. Here she had everything she needed. A cow for milk. A few hens for eggs. A good garden spot. Trees all over with wood enough to keep her warm in the winter. She said now that they’d come out with those fancy chain saws, it wasn’t even much of a chore getting in the wood. Not like it had been when she and Wallace had first married.

And she knew the weather from years of watching it. “We’re in for a humdinger, or I miss my guess. I was out a while ago to check on my old setting hen, and even that old rooster of mine who’s dumber than a bag of rocks was in the henhouse hiding out under the nests. Look around and see for yourself. You won’t see the first bird.”

She’d walked out on the porch to talk to him. “ I haven’t been paying much attention to the birds,” David said.

“I reckon not with your little girl lost out there somewhere, but it won’t do her a bit a good if you get blowed away in a storm. And birds always know.”

“I’ll be in the car.”

“I seen the wind pick up a tractor once and flip it end over end. That storm gets close, you get out of that car and find you a ditch.”

“We don’t have tornadoes in July,” David said.

She gave him a look up through her gray eyebrows. “You’re a preacher man, Brother David. Surely you know the Lord can send us whatever kind of weather he wants to whenever he wants to. Take it from me. Them clouds is promising us a twister a-coming.”

David couldn’t say she was wrong. There was an odd cast to the sky. “You could be right, Miss Gertrude. And I’ll keep an eye out if the wind gets worse. Maybe you ought to go to the cellar.”

“I will if it turns my way, but if it just passes by, I’ll be wanting to see it. It ain’t too often you get to see tractors flipping and trees yanked straight up out of the ground.”

David could almost see her with a glass of lemonade and a bowl of popcorn in her rocker on the porch waiting for the show to begin. “I’m hoping you’re wrong.”

“I could be, but them birds hardly ever are.” Miss Gertrude patted his arm. “But even if the twister does hit, it might not hit wherever your little girl is. I’ll say a prayer for her that the Lord will keep her safe. And you too.”

“I appreciate that,” David said as he went down the porch steps. By the time he got to the end of Miss Gertrude’s driveway, the rain was peppering down. He’d planned to turn left and go on up to Liberty Road, but at the end of the driveway he turned right and went back the way he’d come.

He’d already covered this ground, and Wes had taken the roads off it, but it was as if he could almost see Jocie standing just out of sight motioning him to come that way. Or maybe it was an angel. He quit thinking about where he was driving and just drove. Each turn he made took him closer to the storm.

His wipers slashed back and forth, but they were little use
against the buckets of rain hitting his windshield. He slowed the car to a creep. He was going uphill now, but he had no idea where he was. He was lost in a sea of rain and lightning. Was this how the disciples had felt when the storm had overtaken them on the Sea of Galilee? And Jesus had slept through it. He knew the Father was in control. That’s what David needed to remember now. That the Lord was in control. David needed to give it over to him, to stop thinking he himself could do a better job of handling things than the Lord.

Still, he didn’t stop. He kept pressing on the gas, kept creeping up the road. Hail the size of walnuts peppered the car. David hoped Wes had found shelter. And Jocie. Of course, Jocie. He couldn’t bear to think about her out in this alone. He could almost feel the Lord’s disapproving look, so he whispered, “Not alone, Lord. Never alone, Lord. Watch over her. Protect her.”

S
uddenly the roar swept past and was gone. Jocie warily opened one eye and saw grass. Still green. Still rooted to the ground. She opened the other eye and looked for Wes. He wasn’t on top of her anymore. She felt light. Too light.

She rolled over and sat up. The world was no longer the same.

She closed her eyes and slowly opened them again, but nothing was changed. Rather, everything was changed. The church was gone. Nothing was left but an open floor with the pulpit and one of the pews. Another pew sat in the middle of the churchyard.

Everything else that had made up the church was gone. Doors, walls, windows, roof gone. Simply gone. Swept away. Except the big oak that lay twisted and torn asunder in the yard.

“Wes,” she whispered as if she were afraid to yell for fear the wind would hear her and come back to get what it had forgotten. She stood up. The rain was gentle now, like tears falling out of the sky. “Wes!” She said it louder this time, but there was still no answer.

She tried to pray, but somehow the wind had sucked all the prayers out of her already. Maybe she hadn’t made it through the storm. Maybe she was on the other side and that’s why everything looked so weird. “Don’t be stupid,” she told herself. “Churches wouldn’t get blown away in heaven.”

She still didn’t see Wes, but his motorcycle sat on its handlebars across the road against the fence. On the other side of the fence
the trees were still tall and straight, untouched by the storm. But where was Wes?

Panic ballooned up inside her, and her heart began pounding. He couldn’t have been carried away with the church building. The rain mixed with the tears on her face as she screamed, “Wes!”

She heard a groan, and her heart stopped pounding quite so hard. She scrambled over the fallen tree branches until she saw a boot among the leaves. For a moment she was almost afraid to look, but then there was another groan. Wes had to be alive to groan.

She picked her way through the branches that covered him until she could see his face streaked with bright red blood from a gash on his head. He looked way too still, way too white. She tore a piece off her shirt to press against the wound on his head. “Don’t you dare die,” she told him. “You can go back to Jupiter, but you can’t die.”

His eyes flickered open. He tried to smile. “I think I missed my ride to Jupiter.”

Jocie put her head down on his chest, hugged him as best she could with the tree limbs in the way, and sobbed.

“Stop all that caterwauling, Jo, and get this here tree off me. What in the world happened, anyhow?”

Jocie sat up and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “It must have been a tornado. The church building is gone. Just gone.”

Wes turned his head and tried to see. “I can’t see diddly squat for this tree in my face, but I reckon as how that proves what I’ve been telling you all these years. That if I ever did show up at a church, it would just fall down from the shock.”

“This one didn’t fall down. I’d say it fell up.”

Wes grimaced. “Up first, but no doubt down somewhere.”

Jocie looked around. “Nowhere I can see. Maybe on Jupiter.”

“I guess that could be. Old Mr. Jupiter might have decided he could use a church building up there.” Wes tried to lift his head
again, but the tree branches were in the way. “If he was the one doing it, I wish he hadn’t dropped this tree on me. You think you can get me out of here?”

Jocie pulled some of the branches back from his arms and chest. She had him pretty much in the clear except for the part of the tree that had trapped his right leg, but that limb was nearly as big around as she was. She couldn’t budge it.

“Maybe you could wedge another branch under it and use that to lift it enough that I could wiggle free,” Wes said.

Jocie found a strong-looking branch, jammed the end under the limb, and leaned her weight on it. Nothing happened. “I don’t think I can move it,” she said.

“It might have given a little. Hold it there while I try to move my leg.” Wes mashed his lips together and tried to pull his leg free. His face went ghost white as fresh, red blood soaked his jeans.

“Stop, Wes!” Jocie screamed. “You’re making it bleed.” She let go of the branch and knelt down beside him. She didn’t know what to do. She’d never seen so much blood.

Wes pushed up on his elbows a few inches to look. “Does appear to be bleeding some. Funny it ain’t hurting all that much.” He dropped back to the ground. Jocie thought he’d passed out, but after a moment he said, “Well, I guess old Zell will be surprised. She always figured I’d get banged up on my bike, but who’d have thunk a tree would do me in instead.”

“Don’t talk like that, Wes. We’ll get you out.”

He looked straight at her. “And then what? It’s a long way to a doctor’s office. Heck, it’s a long way to a house if any houses are left standing around here. And for sure I ain’t walking nowhere anytime soon.”

“I can go get help.”

“That you can, Jo. Might be a good idea, in fact.” Wes shut his eyes. “You just go on down the road and find somebody. I’ll lay right here and wait on you.”

She didn’t like the way he’d agreed with her so easily without arguing the best way to do it or anything. She banged him on the chest. “I’m not letting you just shut your eyes and give up.

You have to fight.”

He opened one eye and peeked up at her. “Fight what? I think I’m already down for the count.”

“Nobody’s counting.” Jocie was crying again. “You can’t die. Not now. It would be all my fault, and I couldn’t stand it.”

“The tornado wasn’t your fault, Jo.”

“Maybe not, but you wouldn’t have even been out here if you hadn’t been looking for me. I shouldn’t have run away.”

He opened the other eye. “Why did you run away? It ain’t like you not to talk to somebody.”

“I did talk to somebody. Tabitha. She knew. And Zella knew. Did you know too?”

“Know what?”

“You know what,” Jocie said. “That Daddy isn’t my father.”

“I ain’t never known that.” Wes lifted a hand up to touch Jocie’s face. “Your daddy has always been your daddy.”

“But is he my
father
? I mean like in the Bible. Adam begat Seth, and Seth begat Enos. You know what I mean.”

“I ain’t never exactly lied to you, Jo. Told you some interesting stories but never exactly lied. At least about anything important. So I can’t say for sure about the begatting. But wouldn’t you rather have a daddy than just be begatted?”

Jocie almost smiled. “I don’t think that’s a word.”

“We ain’t setting a story in type here. Anyway, your daddy’s out looking for you. He loves you maybe even more than I do, though I don’t know how he could. And there’s no way I can claim any kind of kin to you. We’re not even from the same planet.” Wes smiled at her. “But no matter how much I love you, I’m gonna have to take a little rest. I’m seeing Jupiter circles.”

“What are Jupiter circles?”

“I ain’t sure, but I’m seeing them.” Wes shut his eyes.

Jocie looked at his chest again. It was still rising and falling. She leaned down close to his ear. “I take it back. You can’t go back to Jupiter either. The Lord’s going to help us.” Jocie looked up at the sky that was clearing out and showing blue again. “You are, aren’t you, Lord? Please.”

She’d barely gotten the words out when she heard a car coming up the road.

D
avid drove through the storm. The trees lining the roadside were bending and shaking, warring with the wind. He thought about stopping, but his foot kept pressing the gas. Besides, if he stopped, it might be under the very tree that lost the battle with the wind. Of course, he could get out of the car and burrow into the ditch beside the road the way Miss Gertrude had advised. It would probably be the sensible thing to do, what with the funny greenish cast to the air and the menacing black clouds he could see through the frantically dancing treetops. But tornadoes came in the spring, not midsummer. He kept telling himself that. At least the hail had stopped and the rain was letting up.