Never Say Never by Lisa Wingate

Author:Lisa Wingate
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781441207814
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-30T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Donetta Bradford

By eight o’clock in the mornin’, my building downtown was hop-pin’ like a sale barn on sheep and goat day. Sister Mona’s bunch was gathered downstairs, watching the weather news in the back part of the shop where I keep the coffeepot, a TV, some old sofas, and some exercise machines I got at yard sales. The equipment don’t get used much, but right now, it was comin’ in handy for folks to sit on.

When I walked in with the pecan rolls and casserole, Bluejay was bouncing real gentle-like on the Abs-o-matic with his little baby in his arms.

“He been fussy?” I asked, walkin’ by with the food.

Bluejay yawned. He had the nervous look new papas have, and he was holdin’ that baby like he expected it to explode any minute.

“Yeah. Jovette been up with him all night, walkin’. She finally come and hand him over, sayin’, ‘You take him. This yo’ bébé.’ ”

I smelled baby powder and milk, and felt the itch grannies get when there’s a little bundle within arm’s reach. “Let me set up this food, and I’ll take him for a bit. It’s hard on a little guy, all this commotion day after day. I’d cry, too.”

“Mais yeah,” Bluejay yawned again. “Gal-ee, he got the lungs.”

“Maybe he’ll be a singer like his daddy.” Somewhere along the way, I’d heard that Bluejay made his livin’ singing in restaurants, and he played the guitar and sang in the Holy Ghost Church, too.

I lifted up the blanket and peeked inside. That baby had his nose all scrunched up like he wasn’t one little bit happy. “Precious. Oh, he’s precious.”

Bluejay snorted, but he was smiling a little. “Tha’s not what his mama call him las’ night. He kept the whole place up. She finally took him out and sit on the curb. The sheriff deputy, he come by and ask what she’s doin’ out there.”

“Buddy Ray Baldridge?” I checked the window just in case Buddy Ray was passing by in his cruiser. I was gonna go thump him on that big knothead of his if he’d been bothering my guests. . . . “Just ignore him. If sense was chickpeas, Buddy Ray wouldn’t make a side dish. The only reason the sheriff sends him out in the cruiser at night is to get him out of the way.”

“Nah, he’s just tryin’ to help,” Bluejay answered. “He got Jovette a blanket from the trunk and then he sit there on the curb and play the harmonica. Turn out this little bébé, he like country music.”

All of a sudden, I got a picture of Buddy Ray Baldridge sitting out in the moonlight, with his long skinny legs folded up and his body bent over that harmonica, playing “Red River Valley” and “So Lonesome I Could Cry” (the only two songs Buddy Ray knew), to quiet that little baby. A tenderness washed over me, and I felt bad for having a mean thought toward Buddy Ray. A mean thought’s just a sin that happens on the inside, Brother Ervin said in sermon one day.

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