The Banty House Read online

  Ginger had had a few shots in her life, but it seemed more than a little strange to think of her life’s blood flowing into that tube. To think that so much could be learned by testing only a few drops was baffling to her. When the nurse finished, she put a cotton ball on the puncture site and covered that with a Band-Aid. “I’ll run this down to our lab. We may have some results by the time you ladies get done with your errands today. I’ll give you a call if we do. You can get up off that bed and go through the door right there.” Linda Sue pointed. “That’s the ultrasound room. Keep your gown on and lay down on the bed in there. I shouldn’t be more than five minutes.”

  Betsy kept a hand on Ginger’s shoulder as she went from one bed to the other. “I can’t wait to see what it is. It would sure be nice if you stayed with us until the baby gets here.”

  “We promise not to fight over it like we do the kittens,” Connie said.

  Ginger took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’d love to stay until the baby is born, but when the baby and I are able to travel, I still want to see the ocean.” She was so afraid that she’d disappoint Betsy that she couldn’t raise her eyes to look at her. “I want my child to do all the things I never got to do, like ballet lessons if it’s a girl and baseball if it’s a boy, or being in band in high school.”

  “Honey, she could do all those things in Hondo,” Betsy said. “You don’t have to live in Los Angeles for your daughter to do that kind of stuff.”

  “I hadn’t thought of Hondo being so close,” Ginger said. “But I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.”

  “Maybe we’ll go with you. We could take the car and talk Sloan into driving, or we could just fly out there, spend a week, and then fly home. We ain’t never been on a vacation, and it’s one of the things on my bucket list.” Kate muttered the last part.

  Ginger could hardly believe her ears. “For real? I’ve never been on a vacation, either. Folks who came into the café always talked about things like going to California to Disneyland or to walk on the beach. It sounded like so much fun.”

  “It’s something to think about, but the next thing on our long-term agenda is the Rooster Romp and then getting a room ready for the baby since you’ve agreed to stay,” Betsy said.

  “That’s long term?” Ginger asked.

  “Honey, at our age, we don’t put much on the calendar past two months down the road,” Connie told her.

  Linda Sue came into the room and peeled back the gown. “This is going to be cold.” She squirted some sort of clear jelly on Ginger’s tummy and ran a wand over it. Immediately, Ginger could hear the heartbeat, and then a picture of her baby appeared on the screen to the side.

  “It’s a pretty good-sized baby,” Linda Sue said. “From what I see, you’re pretty close to right on that due date. I’m going to call it at May 22. We’ll need to see you every week from now until then. And would you look at that—she’s got hair.”

  “She?” Ginger and all the ladies said at once.

  “It’s definitely a girl.” Linda Sue moved the wand to show them a picture of her lower parts.

  “That amazes me,” Kate said. “Look at her little toes and her cute button nose.”

  “She’s lookin’ at me,” Betsy said. “I’m going to be her favorite. She’s going to call me Nana.”

  Tears rolled down Ginger’s cheeks. Love poured from her heart like nothing she’d ever felt before, and yet mixed in with all the other emotions was just a little bit of sorrow. She’d hoped for twins, and there was definitely only one baby. She hadn’t started off by giving her child a brother or sister. Maybe someday, later on down the road, she’d have one more baby, so this one would have a playmate. Perhaps her second one would even have a full-time father who would love both the children.

  “Why are you crying?” Connie wiped away her tears with a tissue.

  “This is the mo-most emotional moment of my life,” Ginger sobbed. “That’s my daughter right there, and she’s beautiful, and I love her so much.”

  Betsy put her head in her hands and cried right along with Ginger until she got hiccups. “I’m so glad you’re letting us share all this with you,” she said.

  Linda Sue removed the wand, wiped off the jelly, and held out a hand to help Ginger sit up. “Our little lab is backed up, so I’ll have to call y’all this evening with the results of that blood work. I’ve made you an appointment for next Thursday at the same time. Oh, and here comes your pictures.”

  “What?” Ginger asked.

  “The printout of your ultrasounds.” Linda Sue handed the black-and-white photos of the baby to Ginger.

  The ladies all gathered around to stare at the pictures. Kate reached out with her forefinger to touch the image. “It’s amazing what they can do these days. Mama didn’t know what we were until we were born. She said once that she was glad we were girls, because she’d have no idea what to do with a boy child.”

  “I wonder if my mother ever saw something like this when she was carrying me,” Ginger whispered. “I can’t imagine having to give my baby up only an hour or two after she’s born. It would tear my heart right out of my chest.”

  Betsy’s chin quivered. “Once a mother, always a mother. I’m sure she thought of you often, darlin’, and maybe even had hopes of gettin’ you back when she got out of prison.”

  “Or maybe of you going to visit her when you got old enough to look her up,” Kate said.

  “Let’s buy a picture album today,” Connie suggested. “We’ll put one of the Easter pictures of all of us in it and then this photo, and you can keep adding to it as the baby grows.”

  “That would be so special,” Ginger said. “I never had any childhood pictures that I could keep. Some of my foster parents took photos of us kids, but I never got to take them with me when I left.”

  Sloan was caught up on everything that afternoon, so he went over to the cemetery and pulled the weeds that had popped up around his grandparents’ graves after the rain. When he finished, he sat down on the weathered bench he’d moved from the front porch of his house and stared at their tombstone. ERNEST DALE BAKER, JULY 4, 1933–OCTOBER 31, 1999. MARTHA JANE BAKER, AUGUST 1, 1935–APRIL 1, 2018.

  He’d only been two years old when his grandpa died, so he didn’t remember much about him. According to the pictures that were still scattered about the house, Ernest had been a tall, lanky man with a thin face who wore a smile all the time. Sloan glanced over to the tombstone on the other side of his grandparents, where his parents had been laid to rest. Richard and Sarah were their names, and he remembered them, but what came to mind more than their physical appearance was the love and happiness they shared when they would come home from a trip and scoop him up in their arms and hug him.

  Tinker jumped up on the bench beside him and laid his head in Sloan’s lap.

  “Thank you for not peeing on the spot set aside for me,” Sloan said as he scratched the dog’s ears. “It’s nice to sit here and let the good memories wash over me. That’s something Ginger can never do. She probably doesn’t know where her father is buried or her mother either, or even where her baby’s father has been put in the ground. She can’t even go sit and have good thoughts like I can.”

  He thought of his teammates who’d been killed that horrible day. Their families had probably had memorial services, but there hadn’t been much to ship home after the bomb exploded. Maybe they at least had gravesites where their loved ones could go visit them. Someday maybe he’d look them up on the internet and see if he could find the places where they’d been laid. He should visit the places and apologize to each of them. That might bring him closure.

  Tinker yipped once, but Sloan figured he was telling a squirrel or a rabbit to get out of his sight. Then a movement to his left took his attention away from the dog and his own thoughts, and there was Ginger not six feet away, walking right toward him.

  “Hey, mind if I join you?” Ginger asked.

  He picked up the dog and held him in his la
p. “Have a seat.”

  “Your folks?” she asked.

  “Yep.” He nodded.

  “Must be nice.”

  “It is,” he said. “I was just thinkin’ about you.”

  “Really?” she asked. “What about me?”

  “When I come here, I think about the good times I had with my parents and my grandparents. You don’t get to do that, so I should be thankful that I can,” he explained.

  “I intend to make those kinds of memories you’re talkin’ about with my daughter,” she said.

  “So it’s a girl for sure?” he asked.

  She pulled something from her pocket and handed it to him. “There’s my baby. She’s due earlier than I thought. The doctor says May 22. I told the sisters that I’d stay at the Banty House until after she’s born.”

  Another one of the chains around Sloan’s heart loosened up a notch or two. “It’s great that you are staying. The sisters have gotten attached to you in a big way. Looks like a big baby to me.” He handed the pictures back to her. “I’ve seen a couple of those in the military from the guys who had pregnant wives. I can tell that’s a baby. Some of the ones they showed me looked more like goldfish or sea monkeys. Are you happy that you’re having a daughter?”

  “Very,” Ginger said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a boy, and besides, I kind of feel like a boy needs a father even worse than a girl does. Role model and all that.”

  “All children do better with both parents, but lots of kids only get one these days. I only had my granny from the time I was seven years old, and she did a good job of being mama, daddy, and granny to me,” Sloan said.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes before Ginger said, “I should be starting back.”

  “Why don’t you come on in the house with me and Tinker? I’ve got iced tea already made up,” he offered.

  “I’d love to.” She took another look at the picture and put it back in her pocket. “Kate bought an album to put my pictures in, but I wasn’t ready to let go of this one just yet.”

  “I can understand that. If I was going to be a father, I’d probably be the same way with the pictures.” He offered her his arm. “The ground is pretty uneven and there’s mud puddles.”

  She looped her arm in his. He shortened his stride and slowed his pace to match hers. When they reached his porch, she removed her arm and held on to the banister. “Your yard and home look like something straight out of a magazine,” she said. “A pretty little white house with a picket fence, flowers beds everywhere, and even a porch swing. It’s so beautiful that it doesn’t look real.”

  “Thank you.” He felt like a king sitting on a golden throne at her words. “Granny liked for the place to look nice, and I’ve kept it up in her memory.” He opened the door and stood to the side. “Welcome to the Baker house. It’s not as big or fancy as the Banty House, but it’s comfortable.”

  “It’s so cozy,” she said, looking around. “You must be related to Connie. She can scare dust right out the door.”

  “Granny’s training and then the military added more training on top of that.” He grinned. “I’ll pour us a glass of tea. Sit anywhere and make yourself at home.”

  Ginger stood in front of the sofa for several minutes, staring at all the pictures arranged on the wall behind it. “I can’t imagine having relatives like this. Is this your granny and grandpa in the middle?”

  “That was taken on the day they got married. She was eighteen and he was nineteen.” Sloan filled two glasses with ice and then poured sweet tea into them. “He was in the army and got deployed right after they married. They didn’t have my dad until a couple of years after he got home. The one on your right is my dad when he graduated from high school. On your left is my mama. They dated from the time they were fourteen, and married about a year after they graduated. All the rest are pictures of me as I grew up.” He carried the tea to the living room and set both glasses on the coffee table. “That one right there”—he pointed—“is when I won grand champion on my steer at the state fair, and that one is my army picture when I graduated from basic training.”

  “What’d you do in the army?” She eased down onto the sofa and picked up her glass of tea.

  “I was sent to school and trained to defuse bombs.” His mouth went dry when he uttered the words.

  “Do you ever get called on to do that now?” she asked. “It sounds pretty dangerous.”

  “No. I’ve been declared a washup.” He drank down half of his tea. “There was a big problem in Kuwait, and . . .” The words trailed off as he stared into space.

  Had she pressured him to go on, he might have dug his heels in and clammed up, but she just looked into his eyes and waited, giving him time to collect his thoughts. “We weren’t supposed to have liquor or even real beer over there. The country was primarily Muslim and they don’t allow liquor or beer, and when Granny sent jerky to me, it couldn’t be pork. We had to go through classes before we went to be sure we didn’t cause an international incident,” he finally said. “But sometimes the guys would get it in a care package disguised as mouthwash. Put it in a Listerine bottle and no one even thinks to open it and check. Or they could put a few drops of blue food coloring in a bottle of vodka and it’ll pass as Scope.”

  “So y’all got drunk when you weren’t on duty?” she asked.

  He shrugged, not sure if he wanted to go on but wanting to get it off his chest. The therapist had wanted him to talk about it, but he’d just sat through those sessions with the guilt lying heavy on his shoulders—not saying a single word.

  “Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, then tell me a story about your granny instead.” Ginger laid a hand on his bare arm.

  Her touch gave him the courage to go on. “I was the only one who got drunk that night. The rest of the guys weren’t drinking. I’d just gotten a phone call from my granny telling me that my dog, a big old red-boned hound that she got for me when my folks were killed, had gotten hit on the road and killed. I’d had him since I was seven years old. Granny thought that it might help me when my folks died to have a puppy.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ginger gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I can’t imagine having a pet and then losing it. But you still had Tinker, right?”

  “Tinker showed up after I graduated from high school and left home,” he said. “He was an old dog when he arrived on Granny’s porch step, and she took him in. He’s been a lot of company to me since she passed away.”

  “So you got drunk,” she said. “Is that the reason they sent you home? Over one night of drinking?”

  “No.” He cleared his throat and went on to say, “I was hungover the next morning when my team got a call to go out to one of the far buildings on the base. Someone had called in a bomb threat. They left me on my bunk with a trash can beside me and told my commander that I had the flu.” His voice sounded hollow in his own ears. “They took another bomb tech along, and . . .” He stopped to swallow the lump in his throat. “And, well”—he took a deep breath—“to make a long story short, it wasn’t just a threat, and the guy they took with them had evidently never dealt with a device like that.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “My entire team, plus a ’cruit that had just arrived the day before, were killed,” he whispered. “John Matthews,” he said, and tears began to flow down his cheeks. “Chris Jones.” The first sob caught in his throat. “Creed Dawson.” He grabbed a tissue. “Bobby Joe Daniels and Wade Beaudreaux. I didn’t even know the new guy’s name until later, when I read about the private memorial that was held on the base.”

  “And you blame yourself?” Ginger took the tissue from him and wiped his face with it. Then she tilted up his chin and looked him right in the eyes. “Don’t punish yourself.”

  “Who else is there to blame or to punish?” he asked.

  “Way I look at things is that everything happens for a reason. Evidently God has a purpose for you to fulfill on this earth before He tak
es you on to heaven to be with your granny. He’s not obligated to tell us His plans, but we should respect them.” She didn’t blink or look away.

  “You really believe that?” he asked.

  “I went to church with the cook sometimes, or to just whichever one was open when I left work.” She gave a brief nod. “I kind of lost my faith for a while, and I’m still not real sure what God’s plan is for me, but I do know that it wasn’t your fault that all your buddies were killed. Did you go to any of the memorials?”

  He shut his eyes. “I was in the hospital at the time with what they said was the worst case of depression they’d ever seen. I was almost catatonic. I remember wishing that I could just stop breathing, but my body wouldn’t let me. I killed those men, Ginger, just as surely as if I’d executed them one by one with my rifle.”

  She slapped him on the thigh. “No, you did not. Whoever the hell that terrorist was that planted that bomb killed them. You’ve got to get that shit out of your head, Sloan. Work it out with sweat. Cry it out with tears. But get it out however you can, because it’s going to wind up eating away at you if you don’t.”

  “How’d you get to be so smart?” he asked.

  “Hard living,” she answered without hesitation. “At least you had someone here to take you in and love you when they sent you home. When I finished high school two years ago this month, I had no one and no place, except a shelter that the social worker recommended.”

  “But you never killed your best friends, did you?” he asked.

  “No, but if I’d had a shotgun, I might have blown holes in three guys one night when Lucas wanted me to take two of his buddies to the bedroom. They offered to give him fifty bucks if he’d make me have sex with them. They even offered to let him join in the fun,” she said.

  “Holy shit,” Sloan said. “What did you do?”

  “I left the apartment and didn’t come home until the next day. That’s when I found out that Lucas was dead, and I didn’t even care. I felt guilty for not having any emotion other than relief, but it was what it was. I had no idea that I was probably six weeks pregnant when that happened,” she said.