Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but I have to go home.”

  “You have to, or you want to?”

  Leigh reached over and took her mother’s hand. “We’ve had a nice visit. Let’s not ruin it now.”

  “So you want to,” her mother said. “It’s something to do with that preacher, isn’t it? Where are you chasing him this time? Is he preaching a revival over there somewhere?”

  “No, Mother. And I’m not chasing him. He asked me out.” The words were out before she thought.

  “You have a date?” Her mother fell back in her chair and threw her hands up in the air.

  “You don’t have to look so shocked, Mother.” Leigh laughed. Nothing her mother could say was going to spoil the joy bubbling up inside Leigh. In about two and a half hours David was going to show up at her door, and they were going to get in his car and go somewhere. Alone together. She had a date. A real date.

  “You could have told me,” her mother said.

  “I did tell you. Just now.” Leigh leaned over and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Be happy for me, Mother.”

  “But I’m worried about you, Leigh. You might get hurt.”

  “You know, I never once climbed on the monkey bars at school because you always said I might get hurt. All the other kids looked like they were having so much fun, but I kept my feet on the ground because I might get hurt. But if I had it to do over, I would climb right up on top of those monkey bars and sit there up high and watch the world go by.”

  “Monkey bars? What has monkey bars got to do with you going out with this preacher?” Her mother was frowning.

  “Not a thing. And everything,” Leigh said with another laugh. She squeezed her mother’s hand. “Thanks for lunch, Mother. And I’m going to pray you can be happy for me.”

  “I pray for you every day,” her mother said.

  “I know. And you know, I think your prayers may be getting an answer.”

  “I didn’t pray for you to meet this preacher.”

  “But surely you prayed for me to be happy.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then your prayers are being answered. He’s a good man, and I think I love him.” Leigh gave her mother another quick hug, picked up her purse, and was out the door before her mother could catch her breath from that revelation. By Thursday, no doubt she’d have plenty to say, but that was okay. Leigh wasn’t worried about Thursday. She was just enjoying the precious present.

  She rolled all her car windows down before she pulled out of her parents’ driveway, and let the wind blow in on her all the way home. To her apartment. To her home. To her first date ever. To David.

  I think I love him. The words echoed in her mind. Then she decided she hadn’t been totally truthful with her mother. She didn’t think. She knew.

  26

  David felt like a sixteen-year-old driving toward Leigh’s apartment Saturday evening with his hands so sweaty they were slipping around on the steering wheel. His heart was doing a tango inside his chest, and he didn’t have the first idea what he was going to say after he climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. He felt sort of the way he did sometimes when he stood up behind the pulpit to preach. That thought surely approached sacrilege—comparing a simple date to delivering the Lord’s message.

  His eyes shot heavenward with a Sorry, Lord, but he smiled, thinking the Lord wouldn’t be that offended. Some people pictured God as solemn and ever serious, but he thought God must have a fine sense of humor. How else could anyone explain the duck-billed platypus that looked like something made out of spare parts? Or that the Lord had given catfish whiskers to taste with, monkeys tails to swing through trees, and elephants noses that doubled as shower nozzles. And he made man. Surely man was the creation that kept the Lord laughing the most.

  And David was no exception. He imagined the Lord looking down on him now and shaking his head with a smile. He might even be summoning the angels over to peer down with him so they could all have a laugh or two over this middle-aged man sweating over a first date. But if he was, there was love in his laughter. God was love. Man could have joy in that truth.

  David had spent much of the afternoon studying that truth in 1 John as he worked on his sermon for the next day. The beginning of the third chapter said, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”

  He’d read that bit of Scripture over and over to let the meaning settle in his heart. Sons of God. Sons and daughters of God. People of God. He didn’t want his people of God, the ones at Mt. Pleasant, to divide themselves into this kind of people or that kind of people. He wanted them to see the love the Father had bestowed on each one of them. And that love was to be received and processed in one’s heart and turned around and bestowed on one’s neighbors. At least David thought that was the message the Lord was trying to reveal to him out of the Scriptures.

  But he’d need to study more. The afternoon had been full of interruptions. First it took awhile to get Wes settled back in the living room. The man was almost too tired to pull himself out of the car when they got home, but the trip had been more than worth it. The sight and smell of the pressroom was just what Wes had needed. He came home and ate almost every bite of the tuna salad sandwich Jocie had fixed for him.

  Then once Wes was resting easy and David had just settled down in front of his desk with his back to the fan to keep the wind from flipping the pages of his Bible, Tabitha showed up in his doorway. He had to take time to talk to her. The poor girl was miserable. And lonesome. He was giving her all the love he could, but she needed more. She needed a husband to love her through this, to rub her back and massage her feet and carry her drinks.

  He put his hand flat on her extended belly and felt the baby moving as he prayed for both mother and child. That always made Tabitha feel better, and she was smiling when she left in search of a cooler spot to fan away the afternoon. He’d never felt the movement of his own babies in the womb. He’d been down in a submarine during the war while Adrienne had carried Tabitha, and she had refused to let him near her while she was expecting Jocie.

  He shut his eyes and mentally closed the door on his dark feelings of regret. That was past and gone. Here and now he needed to concentrate on reading the Scripture and coming up with the Lord’s message.

  He hadn’t even gotten to the end of the chapter before Jocie knocked on his door and poked her head into his room. He looked around at her with a frown.

  “Sorry, Dad.” She looked worried that he might yell at her or something, but she stood her ground. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed while you’re getting your sermon together, but Mr. McDermott is on the phone. I told him you’d call him back, but he said he really needed to talk to you. Something about Homecoming.”

  David sighed and marked his place in the Bible before he stood up to go downstairs to the phone. “Then I guess I’d better go talk to him.”

  The Homecoming service hadn’t been the reason Matt McDermott had called. He’d started out with that, wanting to have a meeting to go over their plans for Homecoming Day the third Sunday in September. A former pastor was delivering the morning message. They’d lined up special music for the afternoon service, and Harvey McMurtry would be reading the history of the church the same as always. Everything was in order, and it wouldn’t even matter if that was the day Tabitha’s baby decided to come. The day would go just as well whether David was there or not.

  He listened to Matt and agreed to a meeting after church the next day. Then he waited for the real reason for the call. Matt had hesitated for a minute before he spit it out. “I was wondering if you’d had the chance to go by and see Bob and Charlene. Charlene’s mother was telling Dorothy how unhappy Charlene was, not getting to come out to church the last few weeks.”

  “I’ve been by to see them a couple of times, Matt, but I’m afraid Bob’s not very interested in talking to me right now. He thinks I insulted his integrity and his faithfulness, or
at least that’s my best guess at what he’s thinking.”

  “Well, I know you didn’t do that, Brother David.”

  “Not intentionally, at any rate.” David wondered how he could make their conversation as short as possible so he could get back to his sermon notes without making his head deacon feel put off. Rehashing his and Bob Jessup’s misunderstanding wasn’t going to help Bob forget his hurt feelings.

  David held in another sigh as he said, “But I don’t think I’m going to be able to talk him back into a pew at Mt. Pleasant. At least not right now. He shuts down his ears when he sees me coming. Maybe you’d have a better chance.”

  “I have talked to him.”

  “Good, then he knows you care about him.” David hoped Matt would let it drop, but he didn’t. It was a kind of cleansing to unload the whole story on the preacher.

  “He’s thinking you’d rather see the Hearndons at church than him. I told him that the Hearndons hadn’t even been back but one Sunday since he’s been at church, but he said it wasn’t the Hearndons he was worried about.”

  “Then what was he worried about?” David was sorry he’d asked that as soon as the words were out, because of course what Bob Jessup was worried about was the preacher. All at once, David was a little afraid that Matt was worried about the preacher as well. He didn’t let Matt answer his question. “Look, Matt, I’ll go visit him again next week if he doesn’t show up tomorrow. I’ll go see him even if he does. But I don’t think it will do much good. He’s got his mind set against me.”

  “That’s true enough, Brother David,” Matt said. “I just hate to see the church getting split up over this.”

  “Split up? You think the church is getting split up over Bob not coming?”

  “Not just Bob. The other thing too. The Hearndons.” Matt sounded sad.

  “The Hearndons are part of our church community, and I’m not going to turn anyone away from our worship services. If you want that, you’ll have to turn me away first.” David decided to be blunt. Sometimes you could circle around an issue until you were dizzy.

  “I wasn’t suggesting anything like that, Brother David,” Matt said quickly. “Oh no. I wouldn’t want you to even imagine I was. You’ve been a godsend to our church. Everybody loves you.”

  “Maybe we should say ‘almost everybody,’” David corrected.

  “Well, some of them that had reservations are coming around. I hear the Martins have got back on the list to have you for dinner on Sundays.”

  “They have. I’m sure we’ll have a good day at their house,” David said. He’d have to think through every word before he let anything come out of his mouth on that Sunday, but it was a step in the right direction. He and Ogden Martin were on the same team for the Lord. They needed to act like they were.

  “Then maybe we can hope Bob will come around.”

  “In time. And with prayer. You and I can covenant to pray about it, Matt.”

  After he had hung up the phone and checked his watch, David had prayed all the way back up the stairs to his room. He shut the door and did his best to block out every thought but what the Lord was putting in his mind as he worked on the outline for his sermon. Then he prayed all the time he was taking a shower and getting dressed.

  And now he was praying as he got out of his car in front of Leigh’s apartment. Wordless prayers, because he didn’t know what to pray. For guidance? For a good time? For Leigh? For himself? For all of those? Maybe for inspiration on where to take her. That morning at the park he’d promised her a surprise, but then the afternoon had been so cluttered that he hadn’t even thought about where they could go, much less planned anything. He might have to ask her to make some peanut butter sandwiches after all.

  Mrs. Simpson, Leigh’s landlady, was peeking out her back window as David crossed the yard to the stairs. When David smiled and waved, Mrs. Simpson dropped the curtain as if it had burned her fingers and stepped back from the window. What was that about? David wondered as he started up the outside flight of stairs to Leigh’s apartment. Maybe she thought he’d caught her being nosy instead of friendly. Maybe she thought he was wrong to come calling on her young neighbor. Maybe she was right, David thought even as he started smiling before he tapped on Leigh’s door.

  Why was he worried about what he was going to say? He hadn’t worried about what he said that morning. The words had just come out. Leaning over to hug and kiss Leigh had felt as natural as breathing. What difference did it make what Mrs. Simpson thought? What anybody thought? The Lord might be laughing at David’s awkward attempts at romance, but David didn’t note the least hint of disapproval in his soul. And the people he might worry about approving or disapproving were the people who had seen him off at home with smiles.

  Wes had given him a thumbs-up. Aunt Love had asked him to remind her what Leigh’s name was one more time before she said, “Such a sweet girl. A blessing.” Tabitha had done her best to smile through a new threat of tears that had nothing at all to do with his having a date and everything to do with her condition as she waved at him from the porch, her feet in a washpan of cool water.

  Jocie had trailed him out to the car before giving him that grin again that said Wes had told her all about the kiss in the park. “Have fun,” she had said. “But remember you have church in the morning.”

  As if he could forget. He’d just have to forgo sleeping that night and get back into the Scripture when he got back home.

  And then Leigh was opening the door and standing before him. A flush colored her cheeks as she smiled up at him shyly. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. The color darkened in her cheeks. “I mean, of course it’s you. I was expecting you.”

  David smiled at her and put his fingers under her chin. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes. “Hello,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, her eyes getting wider. “Hello.”

  He dropped his hand but kept his smile. “Are you ready?”

  “More than ready.” She picked up her purse and stepped out on the landing at the top of the steps, pulling the door shut behind her. “I guess I should have just said yes, right? But truth is, I’m nervous as a cat. It’s no telling what I might say. And why do you think they say that about cats being nervous? Do you think cats act all that nervous?”

  “Aunt Love’s cat is pretty nervous whenever Jocie’s dog is around.” David put his hand on her elbow as they started down the steps. “But you don’t have any reason to be nervous. I’m the one who has a reason to be nervous.”

  “You? Why would you be nervous? You’ve surely had dozens of dates.”

  “Back in another lifetime,” David said. “But what do you say we forget that four-letter word, D-A-T-E, and just think about having a good time?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Leigh said. “But I’m not sure everybody else will cooperate. We’ll be the center of attention wherever we go. The preacher and that girl who’s been chasing him.”

  “Have you been chasing me?”

  “As fast as I can. That’s why I’ve been doing all that walking.” Leigh smiled over at him. Her blush was fading. “So I’ll be in better shape and can run faster than you.”

  “I never could run very fast.” David opened the car door for her. “And you’re right about us being the center of attention. We already are.” He lowered his voice a little, leaning in toward Leigh. “I think Mrs. Simpson is taking notes.”

  Leigh laughed. “She is the curious type, but at least she won’t have to worry about my music being too loud tonight.”

  “No, she’ll be able to hear fine while she’s calling everybody in the county.” David gave Leigh a quick smile as he closed her door.

  “So what’s the surprise?” Leigh asked when he got in behind the wheel.

  “That there isn’t one?” David gave her an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but things were pretty crazy this afternoon.”

  “That’s okay. I can run back up to my apartment and get the bread and peanut butter for a picnic at
the Banner office if you want.”

  David laughed. That, he decided, was the best thing about Leigh. She made him laugh. Everywhere else he had to be so responsible. He had to take care of people. Not that he didn’t laugh with them. He did. But there was something different about laughing with Leigh. Something he’d been missing for years. Maybe something he’d been missing forever. “We’ll save the peanut butter for another time,” he said. “We’ll just go out to the Family Diner. No candles on the table, but then Zella already thinks I’m hopeless. This will just prove her right.” He started the motor and pulled out on the road.

  “On this date—” Leigh slapped her hand over her mouth for a second before she went on. “Oops, I wasn’t supposed to say that word. Anyway, on this whatever we’re having, it’s what I think that’s important. And I think candles on the table are way overrated.”

  David stopped at the end of the street before turning to head out to the restaurant on the other side of town. He looked over at Leigh. She was wearing a blue dress the same color as her eyes, and her hair lay in soft waves on her shoulders. “Did anybody ever tell you that you’re beautiful?”

  Her cheeks went rosy again, but she didn’t turn her eyes away from his. “Only my mother when I was a little girl.”

  “You’re beautiful, Leigh Jacobson,” David said as he reached across the seat and took her hand.

  After that, it didn’t seem to matter to either one of them that everybody at the Family Diner found a reason to come over and talk to them with a big “well, can you believe this” smile spread across his or her face. It didn’t seem to matter that Jane Ellen, their waitress, hovered around their table to make sure she didn’t miss anything of note. It didn’t seem to matter that the baked potatoes had been cooked too long and the iced tea was a little watered down.

  It didn’t even seem to matter that when he took Leigh home, they had to talk in whispers as they sat on the top step of the stairs to her apartment to keep from rousing Mrs. Simpson. It didn’t seem to matter that the outside air even at going on eleven p.m. was still warm as bathwater.