“I can always hope that the almighty Jennie Sue Baker will be brought down a few notches. Got to get back to work,” Cricket said as she slid out of the booth.
Rick wiped sweat from his brow as he settled into the driver’s seat of the bookmobile and drove it toward Bloom. It had air-conditioning when it was running, but with the budget cuts, he’d been told to use the air only when he was driving from one place to another. The patrons had learned to get their books checked in and get more in a hurry.
He’d just gotten it parked in the library lot when his sister, Cricket, pulled up in the truck. Twenty years ago, when he was ten years old and it was new, it had been red, but now it had more rust spots than paint. Still, it was the only vehicle they owned, and the engine still purred like it did when it was brand-new.
She tossed the truck keys his way, and he caught them midair. He limped over to the library door and shoved the bookmobile keys into the return slot for books. On Mondays the town’s small library was closed by the time he got home from his run up to Roby. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he was back from Longworth in plenty of time to take the keys inside before Amos closed up.
“So did you hear the latest news?” Cricket asked as she got into the passenger seat.
“I hope it’s that the library got a big donation, and we can take the bookmobile back to Sylvester again. Those little old folks can’t get down here to the library, and I’d love to be able to visit with them again.” He started up the engine and headed east of town.
“That would be a miracle, not news,” Cricket said. “Jennie Sue Baker came back to town. She got off the bus right in front of the café, and I’ve even got pictures to prove it.”
“So?” Rick raised an eyebrow.
“Jennie Sue, the queen of Bloom High School, cheerleader and all the trimmings? In my class—don’t you remember her?”
“Sure I do, but how’s it news that she’s back in town? Her folks live here.” Rick remembered Jennie Sue Baker very well. She’d been one of the rich crowd, but she never came off as uppity or too good to talk to those who weren’t on her social level, in his opinion.
“She was on a bus,” Cricket said.
“I came home on a bus. It’s a means of transportation,” Rick said.
“Not for the almighty Bakers of Bloom, Texas,” Cricket sighed. “The last time she came to town, for one of our class reunions, she arrived in a bright-red sports car with her diamond-dealin’ husband. Her daddy has an airplane, and her mama drives a brand-new Caddy all the time. I mean, like she trades it every fall for a newer model.”
“And this all is your business why?” Rick asked.
“Because I don’t like her. And because someday I’m going to be somebody that looks down on her like she did me in high school.”
Rick laughed again. “Let the rich do their own thing and mind your own business, Cricket. Be happy where you are.”
She sighed and put her hand out the open window, letting the hot air rush through her fingers. “Don’t you ever want to be something else other than a farmer?”
Rick wiggled in the seat to get his bad leg into a more comfortable position. The IED that almost killed him had left scars that still itched and pulled at his skin. “Sure, I want to be able to take that bookmobile to more people. I want to cultivate readers. I want every house in Bloom to have a little lending library out by the road in front of their house where folks can take a book and leave one,” Rick answered. “Other than that, I want to grow good crops and be able to sell them at the farmers’ market in Sweetwater every Friday and Saturday.”
“You’ve always been such a Goody Two-shoes.” When the truck stopped, Cricket slung open the door and stomped toward the house.
Rick stepped out, bent to rub the pain from his knee, and limped across the yard that had gone brown in the Texas summer heat. Water had to be saved for the crops, and besides, a pretty green lawn had to be mowed more often. In stark contrast, his five acres of gardens stood lush and beautiful. Tomatoes as big as saucers were ripe and ready to be harvested, corn ready to be plucked, and green bean vines loaded. Throw in watermelon, cantaloupes, peppers, radishes, and carrots, and he always had a full truckload of food for the market. The rest of the week, he had regular customers in Bloom.
Cricket had turned on the window air-conditioning unit. It hadn’t cooled the small house down much, but it wouldn’t take long. Living room, kitchen, three bedrooms, and a bathroom—plenty big enough for him and his sister. Home now, but he couldn’t wait to get away from it when he’d graduated from high school and joined the Army Rangers. He’d been on a secret mission when he stepped on the IED that sent him flying into the air. When he woke up, he was in a hospital. Several months later they gave him a medical discharge. Strange how a person’s life could make a 180-degree turn in the matter of a split second.
“So what’s for supper?” he asked.
“I don’t care. I’d be happy with a bowl of junk cereal,” Cricket answered as she went to the bookcase in the corner of the living room and pulled out an old yearbook.
“I was thinkin’ about fried sweet potatoes and maybe a hamburger patty thrown in a cast-iron skillet so that we don’t have to fire up the oven,” he said. “You need more than junk cereal.”
“Whatever,” she huffed. “I’ll slice tomatoes and cucumbers soon as I thumb through this. I want to see exactly how many times she got her picture in the yearbook. I’m only in it one time for choir other than our senior pictures.”
“Those cheerleader pictures would be in there,” he said. “I remember that from when I played football.”
Cricket flipped through the pages, laid it aside, and sighed. “That’s all she was. Just a cheerleader. She wasn’t a big shot with student council or in anything else. I wonder why. I remember her on Fridays in that cute little short-tailed skirt and a ribbon around her ponytail. I thought she had her nose in everything that went on at the school.”
“I remember her as a sweet girl who didn’t quite fit in with the crowd she’d been thrown into,” he said. “And, sis, I’m really sorry that you are stuck on this farm when you want to do bigger things, but it takes two of us working on top of what you make at the café and what I get from veterans’ disability to keep it going.”
“I know,” she sighed. “We’d better get supper cooked and over with so we can go pick beans and corn until dark. I bet Jennie Sue’s getting her nails done.”
“Probably, but I wish you weren’t obsessed with her. Be your own person.”
Cricket kicked off her shoes and headed into the kitchen. “I’m not obsessed with her. She never even has time to give a common person a simple hello, so don’t accuse me of that.”
“If she’s all that terrible, I’m glad you aren’t like her, but I always got the feelin’ that she was just a little bit shy.” He kicked off his boots and joined his sister in the kitchen.
Rick never wiped the steam from the mirror on the back of the bathroom door after a shower. He didn’t want to see the scars on his body or that long, ugly one that ran from his hip down to his ankle. That the doctors had been able to save the leg at all was a miracle, and he was grateful, but he didn’t want to look at it.
He’d gone right into the service after high school with the intention of making a career of it. He’d been on dozens of missions in the nine years before he’d gotten hurt and discharged two years before.
It hadn’t been easy to come home to Bloom a broken and scarred man. He’d been the star quarterback on the football team his senior year even though he wasn’t one of the jocks. The son of a farmer who didn’t fit with the in crowd, he’d always thought he’d return with a chestful of medals. Maybe his sister’s drive wasn’t too different.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded barefoot to his bedroom, where he shut the door firmly. No mirrors in that room—only a bed, a nightstand with a lamp, a chest of drawers, an overflowing bookcase, and an old wooden rocking chair that his grandmother had bequeathed to his mother.