She’d worked her way from the bedrooms and the bathroom and had dusted the pictures lining the walls in the hallway. Most of them were of people that she didn’t know, but there were a few of three little girls, then three teenagers and three older women that she figured were Flora, Nadine, and Lettie at various stages of their lives. Someday Jennie Sue was going to have a hallway with pictures of her family all lined up pretty in it to make her smile when she dusted them each week. She’d never have a picture of Emily Grace to hang on the wall with the rest of her kids’, if she was ever blessed enough to have them, but she’d tell her children about their older sister, for sure.
Leaving the pictures behind, she parked the vacuum in the middle of the living room floor and headed outside to see if the slight wind had dried the sheets hanging on the line. Stepping out in the heat from the cool house almost took her breath, but that was Texas in the summertime. It was unusual that there was even a slight breeze. Mabel said that the wind blows constantly in Texas until the first day of July, and then it’s impossible to buy, beg, or borrow enough to flutter the leaves until September.
The sheets still felt damp on the edges, so she crossed the yard to go back inside and dust the living room when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. Before she could jerk her head around to see what was happening, she heard a thud and a moan. She took a step backward and peeked around the edge of the house to see Nadine lying on her back under the huge pear tree.
“Sweet Lord.” Jennie Sue dropped to her knees beside her and touched the artery in her neck to see if she was alive. Her pulse was beating, but not nearly as fast as Jennie Sue’s.
Nadine took a huge gulp of air, and her eyes opened wide. “Help me up. Gravity just got more than my boobs and butt. Either that or them damned aliens swooped down and pushed me off that limb.”
“You lie perfectly still. Don’t even move your fingers,” Jennie Sue demanded as she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed 911. “You could have a fractured back or neck. If you move, it could paralyze or kill you.”
“I’m fine,” Nadine argued. “I’m not going to die fallin’ out of the pear tree. Me and God got a deal. I get to live to be a hundred years old, because that’s how long it’ll take for Him to forgive me of all my sins. Dammit! My shoulder hurts.”
“Don’t move.” She kept her eyes on Nadine as she talked to the lady on the other end of the line and explained what had happened.
“I’m not payin’ for an ambulance. You and Lettie can take me to the doctor here in town,” Nadine fussed.
“If you don’t be still, I’ll tell the aliens to come back and get you,” Jennie Sue threatened.
Jennie Sue finished talking on the phone, quickly called Lettie, and then sat down on the grass beside Nadine. “If you don’t have the money for an ambulance, then use my cleaning money until you save up enough to pay for it. You’ll need a backboard and a neck brace.”
“It’s not the money. It’s the principle. They come less than ten miles and charge out the ass for what? A ride in the back of a crowded van. Hell, I got a van, and I’ll even lie in the back seat if you’ll let me sit up. Besides, I’ve got on my oldest panties. I can’t go to the hospital with ratty underbritches. What will people say?” Nadine said.
“I won’t tell a single soul about your panties, and you know those doctors can’t, either.” Jennie Sue crossed her heart with her forefinger and then pulled her phone out of her hip pocket to check the time. It startled her so badly when it rang that she dropped it like a hot potato. She hurried to pick it up to answer.
Lettie’s voice cracked. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”
“She’s talkin’ and breathin’ and there’s no blood, but I’m not letting her move. She’s fightin’ with me about an ambulance,” she answered.
“I’m on my way over there. Turnin’ onto Main Street, I heard the sirens blowin’. We’ll follow them to the hospital. I’ve told her a million times not to climb up in that pear tree to trim it. I swear to God, if she’s broken a hip, I’m going to make her go to a nursing home,” Lettie yelled into the phone.
The phone went dark and Jennie Sue heard the squeal of tires on the driveway and the sirens coming down the street at the same time. Lettie came around the side of the house, her chubby little legs churning as fast as they would go. She had her right hand over her heart and the forefinger on her left hand wagging before she even plopped down on the grass beside her sister.
Nadine cut her eyes around at Lettie. “Don’t start on me. I’m already mad because y’all are makin’ me go in the ambulance. You was yellin’ so loud on Jennie Sue’s phone that I heard what you said. I’m not goin’ to no damned nursing home. If my hip was broke, I’d know it. Only thing that hurts is my shoulder. I know how to tuck and roll when I fall. I’m not like you and Cricket. Y’all just sprawl out when you go down.”
“What have we got?” Two paramedics jogged around the house with a body board and a neck brace.
“Ninety years old and fell out of a pear tree,” Lettie said. “She hates doctors and hospitals, so make her stay for a week to teach her a lesson. And give her shots every day even if she don’t need them.”
“Don’t be a bitch.” Nadine shot daggers toward her sister.
“We’ll give her a good checkin’ out. You want to follow us?”
“Of course I do,” Lettie said. “She’ll lie out her teeth so you’ll let her come home, otherwise.”
“Jennie Sue, make her stay here, and when I’m ready to come home in an hour or so, you can come get me.” Nadine winced when they put her on the board. “She’ll drive the doctors and nurses crazy with all her questions and carryin’ on.”
“This time Lettie wins,” Jennie Sue said.
“Okay, ladies, we’ll see you there.” The paramedics each took an end of the board and carried Nadine to the driveway.
“We’ll take her van so if they do let her come home, we can bring her,” Lettie told Jennie Sue. “She keeps an extra set of keys in the front passenger fender well.”
“Dammit!” Nadine huffed. “I was hopin’ you’d forget.”
“I’ve got the memory of an elephant.”
“And the butt of one,” Nadine said as they lifted her into the ambulance.
“At least I’m not crazy enough to climb up in a pear tree like a monkey,” Lettie said, and then laid a hand on one paramedic’s shoulder. “You take good care of her and don’t hit any bumps, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded with gravity.
Jennie Sue found the key in a little magnetic container with no problem but had to rush back inside the house for her purse. When she returned, Lettie was sitting in the passenger seat. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she kept pulling tissues from the interior of her big black purse. Jennie Sue took the time to lean across the console and hug her tightly. “It’s going to be all right. She might have a busted shoulder. Know what she told me? That the aliens pushed her out of the tree.”
“If them sorry bastards ever do find a way to Earth, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later. I thought for sure she’d be dead,” Lettie whimpered. “Next week I’m hiring someone to cut every tree on her place down to the ground.”
Jennie Sue started up the engine and backed the van out, drove a couple of blocks to Main Street, and then headed south to Sweetwater. “How did you find out so fast? It hadn’t been three minutes since I called 911.”
“Someone must’ve heard it on the scanner and called Amos and he called me. I dropped what I was doin’ and pushed the gas pedal to the floor on my old truck. She’s so skinny, and she’s been clumsy her whole life. If they’ll keep her, I can have these trees gone by the time she gets home,” Lettie declared.