8

Mildred Kersh is in desperate need of someone to work on her hair before her brother-in-law's funeral service day after tomorrow. "My cousin's granddaughter is going to cosmetology school and she wanted to give me a new look last week," Milly said. "It is not at all what I had in mind. If you know of anyone who might be able to do something with this mess, please let me know."

—The Green News-Item

Chris and I set up housekeeping in Room Eight, the very room I had stayed in when I moved to Green.

"Shall I carry you over the threshold?" he asked with an exhausted smile as we took our suitcases into the room. On a chilly evening two years ago, I had walked into the room, alone and lost, begging my friend Marti by phone to let me come home.

Standing next to my beloved husband, I felt a sliver of relief from the grief of the past twenty-four hours.

Before I could step further into the room, Chris embraced me. "What a day," he said. "How are you holding up?"

I jerked away. "Lights!" I shouted. "Chris, the lights are coming on." Sure enough, as we stood in the clean old motel room, the electricity came on. People overflowed from the handful of other rooms, yelling, and we rushed outside.

Iris Jo, Stan, and Pearl had been sitting outside, visiting, when we drove up, Asa playing nearby. Holly Beth, rescued from the newspaper by Iris, was running around, barking, trying to get someone to pay attention to her.

"Praise the Lord," Mr. Marcus said. Little Asa toddled behind him and clapped his hands, clearly aware that something good was happening.

An elusive feeling of a new kind of normalcy washed over me. Electricity and a honeymoon with my new extended family had not been on my list of blessings yesterday.

"I'd better go see if we got power at the paper," Stan said, standing up. He leaned over and gave Iris a sweet, long kiss, so potent and unexpected that it made me want to look away."Don't stay up too late. You're not back to full strength yet."

"Yes, sir," she said quietly and reached up for another quick kiss.

"Kiss, kiss, bye, bye," Asa Corinthian said, tugging on Stan's pants leg, and everyone burst out laughing.

Chris picked the boy up and held him up, flying like an airplane, and Asa pointed in the distance. "Mama car," he squealed. "Mama car!"

He had spotted Kevin's SUV long before the rest of us and was waving wildly. "Mama, mama," he called.

Kevin ran from the vehicle, not even taking time to shut the door. "Asa, baby," she said, taking him from Chris and squeezing him in a hug.

"Stuck," Asa said, squirming from her grip, and we laughed again.

"I'm sorry, little guy," Kevin said. "Mama missed you so much."

"Puppy," Asa said. "See puppy."

"Upstaged by Holly Beth," I said. "Happens to me all the time."

"Have you had supper?" Kevin's mother asked.

"Terrence brought food before heading back to Alexandria," she said. "I want to visit for a minute, tuck my son in, and have a bath. Then, back to work."

"You're not going back to the hospital tonight, are you?" Pearl asked, her voice a mix of disapproval and disappointment.

"I have to, Mama," she said. "We've got more patients than physicians."

"When is that handsome lawyer coming back to town?" Pearl asked. "He was a big help to us today."

"I don't know," Kevin said. "He's got a lot on his plate, and so do I." She promptly changed the subject.

For the next few minutes, we all chatted, everyone hungry for news about neighbors, seeking any positive tidbit.

"Anna Grace should be home by the middle of the week," Kevin said. "She wanted me to let you know."

"Lois and I have some good news about Mannix," Chris said. "He's going to pull through. He's lost a leg, but he ate today. When I stopped by the vet's, I think he was asking for Lois." He reached over and squeezed my hand.

"I ran into a journalism colleague from my old life today," I said. "She was pretty darned impressed with the way we do things down here in Green. My old boss wants to try our techniques."

"So, you're going to be famous?" Iris Jo said with a smile.

"Probably not, but I'm going to soak this up while I can."

"I'm ready to soak up some hot water," Kevin said, "and a little snuggling time with my boy."

I glanced at Chris. "Not a bad idea."

The next few days fell into a new kind of routine. Our schedule included mooching supper off someone and getting in a few more hours of work, newspaper on my end, repairs on Chris's. When we finally headed to the Lakeside, the cozy room was a welcome retreat, a romantic cocoon in the midst of chaos.

Electricity was back on in about three-fourths of town, a reflection of the herculean efforts of utility workers who dotted every light pole in the area. "Let There Be Light," read the main headline on Tuesday. "Power restored to portions of Green."The subhead was grimmer: "Have You Seen These People? Search Continues for Lost Residents."

The list of the dead on the front window was somber, and residents came by in droves to look over the names. Molly recommended we add names of the missing, and she and Katy painted those under the giant words "Not Heard From Yet," joyfully putting a line through a name when the person turned up.

"I am over in Coushatta at my sister's," one woman said, calling the command center.

"That family is out of town for spring break," came another report.

Slowly the list dwindled to fewer than a half dozen, including the discovery of a couple, both injured but taken to two out-of-town hospitals. Two names did not go away. Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sepulvado, poor immigrants from Mexico who lived in an old travel trailer not too far from my house. Or what used to be my house.

Joe grew produce and recycled cans to send money to his family, attended the Spanish service at Grace Chapel, and had been unjustly accused of arson at the paper last year. I winced when I thought of how his life had nearly been ruined by Chuck McCuller, who started the fires and gloated when Joe was arrested.

Chris and I visited the Sepulvados in the fall so I could apologize for not clearing his name sooner, and we had committed as a couple to try to help them out in the months ahead.I had expected to invite them over to our house for dinner, not search the countryside for them.

"We have to look again," I told Chris when he stopped to pick me up for supper on Wednesday.

"Sweetheart, I've looked for them every day this week," he said, a husky sound in his throat, as though a frog had lodged there. "Their trailer is turned over on its side, but they are nowhere to be found."

"Maybe someone came by and picked them up."

"Possibly," Chris said.

"Could they have gotten scared and somehow gone back to Mexico?"

"I doubt it, but there's so much confusion, anything could happen."

"Have you checked at the hospital?"

"You asked me that last night. I've checked three times and I asked Kevin when I saw her leaving for work this morning."

My attitude toward the visiting press had softened as the week wore on, and I decided to seek their help. Reporters came and went in our building, using the bathroom, grabbing a cup of coffee, and chatting; and I told them about the Sepulvados, asking them to be on the lookout for any news that might help us find them.

A photographer from New Orleans found Mrs. Sepulvado's body while taking pictures near where my house had sat on Route Two. The body was under a sheet of tin and partially covered by tree limbs. A group of volunteers from Grace Chapel intensified the search for Joe, finding not so much as a clue.

For the first time in several days, I wept. Hard, angry tears.The Sepulvados had sacrificed to provide for their family and to have a better life. I couldn't understand why such bad things had happened to so many good people.

If I had had more time, I would have set off for Pastor Jean's to rant and ask for counsel, but we were all going in so many directions that I simply buried it, feeling a cold, hard knot growing inside me.

That evening I asked Chris to drive me to my old house site, the first time I had been there since the night of the storm.Less than a week had passed, but it felt like a lifetime. Several people, including other reporters, had asked me about it, but I had put off going back.

"I'm way too busy for that, and there's nothing to see," I said to Gina, who seemed to have settled in Green for the long haul, renting a room in the newer motel on the edge of town.

When Chris picked me up, Katy and Molly and Tammy were in the newsroom, along with a camera crew from a Shreveport television station and a wire service reporter from Little Rock, who had swapped places with a reporter from Houston.

"Let us go with you," the journalists said. "We'll document your reaction. It'll be a great story."

"It's too personal," I said hesitantly, realizing how pushy I had been in the past.

"Absolutely not," Chris said. "Lois has been through too much this week. You can hear about it later." A few months ago his words would have irritated me, as though he were trying to take over my life or "be the boss of me," as Tammy liked to say. Today they made me feel cared for.

We went by my in-laws' house, in pretty decent shape compared to many homes nearby. Markey and Kramer ran and got into the back of the pickup as soon as we pulled up, and Mannix, lying on a blanket on the porch, whined and tried to stand.

Chris laid him on the front seat, gingerly placing his weight away from the bandage where his leg had been severed. I chatted with Miss Estelle and Mr. Hugh and pried Holly away from my father-in-law, who had kept her for the past couple of days.

When we got to my home place, Kramer and Markey dashed off, as though they had been let out of prison after several decades, and then came back to the truck, barking for Mannix. Chris put him on the blanket on the ground, and Mannix tried to stand up, yelped, and lay back down. The two other dogs whimpered as though they were wounded and wandered off, sniffing every inch of the ground.

I placed Holly Beth down beside Mannix. When I looked back minutes later, she was snuggled up against him, sound asleep. The bigger dog was intently watching the area, but did not try to get up.

Chris and I walked around the house, almost as though it still sat there. The memory of it was so real I felt as though I might climb the steps and go in the side door, throw my keys on the table as I had done a thousand times, and flop down in my favorite chair with a book.

Despite the devastation, many of the old plants bloomed, even though they were beaten down from wind, rain, and hail.The pink dogwood still stood, many blooms open, almost like a poem or prayer in the front yard.

Chris wrapped his arms around my waist from behind, and we stood facing the tree.

"This makes me homesick," I said. "Where are we going to live?"

"Where do you want to live?"

"Here. But I've grown accustomed to a roof over my head."

"We'd have to build," Chris said. "Neither one of is up to that decision right now."

"I can't imagine living anywhere other than Route Two," I said, "even though I dreamed about living on the lake when I first came to Green."

An odd look passed over his face. "Let's give it a few days."

On the drive back to town, I asked Chris to go the long way, past his catfish ponds, taken over by his brothers since the storm, and down around the crossroads where a small grocery store and abandoned church sat.

"Right over there is where I first saw you," I said, petting Mannix.

"I remember it well," Chris said.

"I was talking to Mannix. Remember? He came running out barking, and I was afraid of him and got mud on my new shoes?"

"Oh, I remember," Chris said. "I wondered how a goodlooking city girl got so lost, and then I walked into church and you were sitting there in those muddy shoes. I thanked God right on the spot."

"You did not. You were listening to Iris and barely looked at me."

"Oh, honey, I looked all right," he said, reaching over Mannix to pat my knee. "It took me a while to get up the nerve to talk to you."

"Our marriage sure has had a rough start," I said.

He pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me."Do you know how much harder this would have been if you weren't my wife? You make it bearable."

"Ditto," I said, nearly undone by the tenderness in his eyes.

As we meandered on country roads to Estelle and Hugh's house, Chris pointed out oddities he'd seen the past few days.

"Those people," he said, pointing to a caved-in house, "lost everything but the kitchen sink . . . and the woman's wedding ring was lying on the sink, right where she left it."

"That man had driven to the hardware store to buy a saw blade. His mobile home rolled several times. He says a fivedollar tool saved his life."

"Think about Route Two," I said. "That twister knocked the biggest oak in the parish into Iris Jo's house, skipped across the road, blew away my house but hardly touched my trees, ruined the church . . . yet missed Maria's trailer."

"It seems like a wild animal on a rampage," Chris said.

"I learned something else about tornadoes, too," I said.

"What's that?"

"They honestly do sound like a train."

Chris laughed and turned down a rutted dirt road. "While we're out this way, I'll run you by that house Maria and the boys used to rent. You're not going to believe it. One of my players lives near there, too. I'd like to see how he's doing."

We slowly made our way toward a grove of trees. Mannix whimpered when we hit an especially big bump, and I petted his head.

"Sorry, guy," Chris said. "I'm trying to make this as easy on you as I know how."

We stopped at the first building we came to, a shotgun house that leaned at a precarious angle, and had aluminum foil over the windows and a broken soft-drink machine in the front yard. "Oh, that one took a hit," I said.

"Afraid not," Chris said. "It looked like that before the storm."

A teenaged boy came out of the house, followed by a girl of about seven and a baby in a diaper crawling across the yard. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.

"Hey, Coach," the boy said.

"Y'all all right out here, Anthony?" Chris asked.

"We're OK," the boy said, shrugging his shoulders.

"I'm hungry," the little girl said. "Do you know when we get to go back to school?"

The boy looked embarrassed but didn't say anything, just picked up the baby and settled the infant on his hip.

"Don't you have extra supplies?" I asked Chris, stricken.

"It so happens I have lots of things in here," he said. He opened the truck door and reached behind the seat to pull out an emergency food kit from the Methodist church and a sack of groceries his mother had given us, with cheese and crackers, oranges, and a big jar of applesauce. "This might help for today. I'll be out this way in the next couple of days and I'll have more then."

"Thanks, sir," the boy said, handing the baby to the girl and taking the bag and box from Chris.

"That tornado hurt so many people," I said as we drove on down the little road.

"That's not storm damage," Chris said. "They depend on school meals to be fed. I don't know what the baby does. When school's out, lots of kids in this area have no food."

"How can that be?" I asked. "We've got to help them. Surely the paper and the church can come up with something."

"That's my Lois," Chris said, smiling at me. "But it'll take a lot more than a bag of groceries every now and then. You're witnessing a major problem in rural Bouef Parish."

He drove on down the dead-end road to where Maria and her sons had lived, a patch of land that nearly connected to the church's property but was accessible only by the back road. I had come here with Chris and Pastor Jean to help Maria and the children move and knew the rundown house, rented from a friend of a friend at work, had stood under the big cotton wood tree. Now a pile of boards was all that remained, except for a small shed to the side.

Chris slowly stepped out of the truck, a cue for the two dogs in the back to jump out and run around. Always gentle with Mannix, Chris once more took him from the truck. I had never been a dog person before I moved to Green, but I thought how a man treated animals said a lot about him.

"It fell down," I whispered. "You saved their lives by giving them your mobile home."

"It's a miracle," Chris said. "There's no other word for it."

With the word miracle hanging in the air between us, Mannix, who had been immobile since the storm, shakily got to his feet, fell down, and then stood back up on his three legs.

"Here, boy," Chris said, reaching for the animal.

Instead of moving toward Chris, Mannix took off at a slow gait, trying to get his balance. He barked loudly and whined, ignoring Kramer and Markey when they came bounding toward him. I left Holly Beth on the truck seat and hurried to catch up with him and Chris.

Chris reached for Mannix. "Come here, you big lug," he said quietly, but when he touched the dog, it turned and snapped at him, something I had never seen it do to anyone.

"It must be the pain," I said, feeling bad for Chris, who looked stunned.

Mannix kept limping forward, barking and whining, with the occasional growl thrown in, headed straight for the ramshackle shed.

"Mannix," I pleaded, "don't go near that. It looks like it could fall right on top of you. Chris, be careful."

The dog continued on, Chris on his heels, me following timidly behind.

Mannix walked right into the dark shed, over to a pile of rags on the floor, lay down, and barked even louder, then started licking the lump.

He had found Mr. Sepulvado.

"If he had stayed out there a few more hours, he would have been dead," Kevin said later that evening when we sat outside the motel.

"Are you sure he'll make it?" I asked, reaching again for Chris's hand.

"These days I'm not sure of much," Kevin said, "but he's a survivor. He's severely dehydrated and in extreme shock.Anyone else would have died three days ago."

I shook from the memory of Mr. Sepulvado, covered in fire ants and the look of death about him, the drive back to town with three of the dogs up front and me cradling Joe in the back of the truck, laid out on Mannix's blanket. The injured dog refused to leave his side and rested his chin on Mr.Sepulvado's stomach, whimpering when we hit a bump.

"How did he get there?" I asked for the tenth time since we had dropped him off at the hospital.

"Honey," Chris said gently, as though talking to a demented person, "we don't know that. We suspect he was trying to find his wife and got disoriented after the storm."

"He must have found water along the way," Kevin said, "but who knows? When he regains consciousness, perhaps we'll learn more."

Pastor Jean had joined us and sat near Iris and Stan.

"He's a fine man," Jean said. "And his wife was a fine woman.I need to notify his family and set up a service for her."

"How will we tell him?" I asked, leaning into Chris.

"I'll take care of that," Pastor Jean said, rubbing a hand across her eyes, "when Kevin thinks he can handle the news."

"Mannix the three-legged dog," as he was now known, was a national hero, upstaging a helicopter visit from the governor.

The dog was then pampered, photographed, and all-but interviewed.

His story earned him an oversized care package from a major pet supply chain and a call from an agent who wanted to put him in a commercial. Mannix also brought a second horde of reporters to town, all eager to talk about the smalltown newspaper owner and her miraculous dog.

Chris would look at me, smile, and roll his eyes.