“I’m Grunt.”
“Daughtry pointed you out to me at the picnic,” I nodded. Then I whispered, “Nice to meet you.”
“Hank,” the other man said and I assumed he was introducing himself. “I’m going to call Grady and see why him and Stoffer don’t have Terra here yet. He needs his old lady here to calm him down.”
“I need my car,” I whispered to Grunt. “How did you know we were here?”
“Eli,” Grunt answered. “When you sent the text, we were getting ready to have church - just waiting on Daughtry to show up. Kale must have fucking flown to get here so fast. He left us in his dust.”
“Church?”
“A club meeting. Your brother is going to lock up the shop then he’ll be here.”
Grunt and I were watching the Forrester brothers and Lout, waiting to see what would happen next. I was worried about Kale and wondered if he was going to pass out.
“He’ll be okay,” Grunt assured me. “When they were little, something bad happened and it was Kale’s job to take care of Daughtry. Since then, when it comes to his brother, Kale gets worked up.”
“How sad,” I told Grunt. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Nothing. His mama, Daughtry, and his old lady are really all that will help. If none of them are here, it will just take time.”
I’d read about what was happening to Kale in some of the pamphlets and paperwork that came home with Wyatt over the years. It seemed to me, just from what little knowledge I had of the situation, that Kale might have PTSD from whatever had happened when he was young.
Without thinking, I walked to the brothers and knelt beside Lout. Maybe if Kale was used to a woman’s voice, mine would help him focus and come back from the nightmares in his head quicker. Or maybe he’d lash out and fucking punch me. It was a toss up, but I was willing to try.
“Kale,” I said firmly but calmly. “Can you focus on my voice? Just listen to me talk and concentrate on hearing my words.”
He didn’t seem to be phased either way, but he hadn’t hit me yet so that was a plus.
“Kale, Daughtry is going to be okay. They said he was getting better, you know. The nurse you talked to explained that he was going to be alright and he woke up already. Can you focus on my voice and come back to us so you’re ready to see him when they call us back?”
Kale wasn’t moving anymore and he had stopped mumbling, too.
“Keep talking,” Clem whispered as he kept rubbing his brother’s back.
“Daughtry was mad at me, Kale, and I think you might know what I can say to make him happy with me again. I don’t know what to say to Daughtry when he wakes up. Will you help me figure it out?”
As if a light switch was turned on, his eyes focused on me. He was staring into my eyes, but still breathing heavy and his body was so tense it had to be hurting him.
“I think I hurt him, Kale. But he hurt me, too. What can I say to make it better?”
“What did you do?” Kale growled.
I realized then that Kale wasn’t actually any calmer. He was just focusing his anger and confusion on me rather than turning it in on himself.
“We argued and he just wasn’t acting like himself. Or at least I don’t think that’s how he normally acts towards women. He’s never been that way with me before, but he treated me so badly,” I stammered. “I hurt his feelings, Kale, not his body.”
“If you hurt him, I’ll… ,” Kale’s growl stopped when we heard a sound from the doorway.
“Kale!” I heard a woman yell. She rushed toward us and Kale stood up to catch her when she threw herself at him. It was his wife that I’d met at the cookout. “Are you okay? Grady said… ,”
“Jamie talked him down,” Clem assured her, because Kale was too busy glaring at me over his wife’s shoulder.
“I’m not sure she got him down far enough,” Hank said from my side. “Jamie, let’s take a walk.”
I followed Hank, glancing toward Kale and his wife more than once as we made it outside. I didn’t think he would physically hurt me, but I didn’t know him and didn’t trust that he wouldn’t, even with all these witnesses.
The look in Kale’s eyes had been murderous and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was dangerous. It terrified me to have that intensity pointed in my direction.
Grady and Stoffer were both outside in front of the emergency room doors and between them on the hood of a truck was a screaming baby in a carrier.
“Fix it!” Stoffer growled at Grady. Grady shrugged his shoulders and looked at Stoffer. Stoffer shrugged and looked back at the baby. He reached out and pushed the carrier with one finger, trying to get it to rock while putting the least amount of pressure on it, as if it might explode. “I said fix it, goddammit.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I shook my head and reached up to bring the carrier down off the truck. I thrust it at Grady and he held it in front of me with wide eyes.
“How are you gonna fix it? You don’t have any boobs,” Stoffer whispered as he peered under the little umbrella that covered the baby from the sun.
“Thanks, asshole,” I grumbled. “Fuck you very much, too.”
“Well, you don’t,” Stoffer whispered as he glanced at me. “You’ve got a fucking fantastic ass though.”
“Shut. Up.” I glared at him as I undid the buckle holding the baby in the contraption. As soon as she was free, I put her up to my shoulder and started to bounce my body and hers as I patted her back. “Shh, baby. Shh.”
“Her name is Rain,” Hank told me softly.
“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,” I started. The men were looking at me like I was crazy, but the baby had gone from screaming to whimpering slightly, so I was doing something right. “What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.”
My voice echoed off the concrete around us as we all waited for the baby to start screaming again when I was through. She whimpered and I went straight into the theme song from The Brady Bunch, an old television show I’d loved as a child. When I was finished with that one, I didn’t take any chances and went into the theme from The Facts of Life, then The Golden Girls.
Luckily, Rain was sleeping by the time I got to the final verse of ‘Tomorrow’ from the movie Annie. I was almost through with my repertoire of kid friendly songs and would have to start on Bruce Springstee’s catalog of songs next.
“You’ve got a good voice, girl,” Hank told me. “Good job.”
I didn’t stop rocking or rubbing the baby’s back as I smiled up at Hank, “UIL Choir three years in a row.”
Eli rode up on his motorcycle followed closely by my car. I watched as they parked in the lot and hurried toward us.
“Here ya go,” I laughed as I tilted the baby toward Neva. “Her mama’s inside and apparently she’s a boob baby, so we’re SOL if she wakes up.”
“She drinks bottles. Terra’s boobs didn’t work,” Eli informed us.
“How the fuck do you know that?” Hank growled at Eli.
“She said the production line shut down,” my brother told Hank. “I was driving her one day and we had to go into the grocery store. She was on the phone talking to Martha and told her that the doctor said production had halted and she needed formula.”