Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “All you’ve got to do is ask,” Jocie said, still without looking up.

  “That’s what your daddy tells me.”

  Something about his voice made Jocie stop writing and look at Wes. Suddenly it was as if her senses were heightened. She felt a whisper of breeze against her sweaty skin. She heard a bee out in the yard searching for pollen, along with the sound of Wes fingering the tissue-thin pages of the Bible. Her eyes separated out every unruly gray eyebrow sticking up above the reading glasses he wore.

  As long as she could remember she’d been asking Wes to take the Lord and going to church seriously, and now it sounded like he was. She was almost afraid to say anything for fear she might scare away the moment, but at the same time, she couldn’t stay quiet. “Are you thinking about asking?”

  “The idea’s crossed my mind,” Wes said.

  “Then why don’t you?” Jocie held her breath as she waited for his answer.

  “I don’t know,” Wes admitted. “I guess it’s just hard for an old Jupiterian like me to believe in that plenteous mercy.”

  “You mean, you don’t think the Lord can forgive you?”

  “He’d have a lot to forgive.”

  Jocie frowned a little and pointed at the Bible. “But don’t you think that’s what ‘plenteous’ means? That there’s a lot of mercy out there for the asking.”

  “That’s how it sounds.” Wes looked back at the words in the Bible.

  “That’s how it is,” Jocie said.

  Wes looked up at her. “And you know this yourself? You aren’t just saying what you’ve heard your daddy say?”

  “He says it, but even if he didn’t, I’d know it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Jocie hesitated a minute before she answered. “I don’t know. Maybe because of what happened at Clay’s Creek Church. You know, the lilacs and you and Dad showing up when I needed you and everything. And I hadn’t done what I should have done that day, but the Lord helped me anyway. When I prayed, he answered.”

  “You do seem to be having a good return on your prayers this summer, Jo. The dog prayer. The sister prayer. The leg-healing prayer. Even the doctors are changing their tune a little and saying I might actually walk again without crutches after all.”

  “I knew you would. What do Earth doctors know about Jupiter bones anyway?”

  “And you weren’t praying about it?” Wes looked at her with lifted eyebrows.

  “Well, yeah, but I always pray for you. And could be I was praying a little harder than usual since you got hurt.”

  “I’m not sure I’m that good at praying or walking down church aisles.”

  “Daddy says you don’t have to be in a church to ask the Lord to save you, that you can do that anywhere.”

  “The book’s pretty clear on that,” Wes said, lifting the Bible a little out of his lap. “The Lord’s all over, everywhere. But there’s somewhere in here that says it ain’t enough to just be private about it, that you have to step forward and do some aisle walking.”

  Jocie put her hand on his arm. “Aisle walking isn’t all that hard. And if you decide you need to do some of it, I’ll walk on one side of you and the Lord will walk on the other side.”

  “I might just hold you to that, Jo, if I ever do decide to do that aisle walking. But you know what happened the last time I got close to a church. It just blew clear away to Jupiter or beyond.”

  “Not all of it.” Jocie smiled. “Folks are still bringing in pieces. Mr. Armstrong brought in one of the collection plates last Tuesday. He spotted it up in a tree somewhere. Bent a little, but it would still hold money. Daddy took a picture of him holding it. Mr. Armstrong says the people out at the church are going to make a special display case when they build their new church to hold some of the stuff people have been finding.”

  “Sounds like front-page news to me.” Wes shut the Bible and leaned back in his rocking chair.

  “There might not be room this week. We’ll probably have the front page full of pictures of Sidewalk Days. We might even get some shots of the square dancing in the streets Monday night for the top fold.”

  “Dancing in the streets. Sounds like quite the event,” Wes said. “I’ll watch it from my upstairs window.”

  “So you really are moving out on us?”

  “Ain’t nothing against none of you. Could be I’ll even miss you.”

  “Could be?” Jocie leaned over to stare into his face.

  “Could be. I might even miss old Harlan or Zebedee or whatever you call him.” Wes smiled at Jocie and reached over to run his hand down Zeb’s back. The dog turned to grin at Wes. “He’s a fine dog. But sometimes a man needs some time alone to think things through in the proper way.”

  “You mean, like asking for this plenteous mercy?”

  “That’s one of the things.”

  Suddenly Jocie felt like crying. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I ain’t going back to Jupiter or nothing, Jo. I’m just going home. And I’ll be able to go down to the pressroom and keep old Betsy Lou happy and get ink under my fingernails again.” Wes looked down at his hands. “It just ain’t right having clean fingernails.”

  So Monday morning after breakfast, Jocie helped Wes pack up his books and clothes so they could ride in with her father. Even though it was a holiday, they were working on this week’s issue of the Banner so their subscribers could get their papers on Wednesday the same as always. With every book she put in the box, she felt more like crying.

  Even Aunt Love looked a little teary-eyed as she quoted a verse or two out of Psalms, and of course Tabitha had tears running down her cheeks while she watched Wes and Jocie. But that was pretty common the last couple of weeks. Tabitha claimed she wasn’t all that unhappy. Miserable and hot and more than ready for the baby to get here, but that wasn’t why she was crying. She said everything else about her was swollen so she supposed her tear glands were too and that maybe they had to spill over to keep her eyes from exploding. But this morning as she watched Wes packing up to move out, she had a sad look to go along with the tears.

  Wes was the only one of them smiling. He was hopping around on his crutches and doing his best to tease them into smiling back at him. “You’d think somebody had died around here. Come on, girls. It’s just the opposite. I’m coming back to life again.” He did a little shuffle step on his crutches. “Bet you didn’t think I could still dance.”

  “I never knew you could dance to begin with,” Jocie said. “And I haven’t seen anything yet to make me change my mind.”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you recognize the Jupiterian shuffle when you see it?” Wes laughed. “Maybe I’ll teach that step to you at your birthday party next week.”

  “I can’t wait. Leigh’s chocolate cake and your dance lessons. Plus new tubes for my bicycle tires. Dad promised.” Jocie looked over at Wes and smiled. “What more could a girl want?”

  “Strawberry ice cream and dancing in the street?” Wes said.

  “I don’t have to wait for my birthday for that. That’s happening tonight.”

  “Who’d have thunk they’d have ever closed off Main Street in little holy Hollyhill so folks could dance?”

  “Square dancing,” Jocie said. “Church people don’t mind square dancing. You just hold hands while you swing your partner and promenade. Nothing too close or wild. Leigh may even talk Daddy into trying it.”

  “If she does, you be sure to have a camera at ready. We wouldn’t want to miss out on that top-fold picture.”

  29

  Cassidy didn’t like going to town with her mama. She’d have rather stayed home and watched Eli and Elise while her daddy was watering the apple trees. He’d watered them every day since they’d set the trees down in the holes he and Noah had dug. Cassidy and her mama had poured a bucket of water in every one of the holes while her daddy and Noah pushed the round hard dirt clods back in around the tree roots, but the ground just sucked the water up like it was nothing.<
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  Her daddy said the ground was just too dry because of how hot it was, and so every night he asked her mama to pray for rain when she said grace at the supper table. Cassidy’s daddy didn’t go to church, but he believed in the Lord. He had to. Else he wouldn’t be asking her mama to pray for it to rain on their trees. There wasn’t any use in praying if you didn’t believe the Lord was listening. And Cassidy had heard her daddy say prayer was all that was going to keep those trees they’d put in the ground from dying if they didn’t get some earth-softening rain soon.

  Cassidy shut her eyes and imagined the trees in rows across the field. She liked going down there and walking around the little sapling trees. She counted them over and over as she imagined them the way her daddy said they would look in a few years. All green and leafy and full of apples. He said she’d be able to just reach up and pick her off a big red apple to eat. When he talked about it, she could almost hear the pop of the apple when she bit down into it.

  “We’ll have us an orchard, Cassie,” he’d told her. “Not just these trees but dozens more planted all over this field. We’ll pick baskets and baskets of apples and take them all over to sell.”

  “To Chicago?” Cassidy had asked.

  “Maybe even to Chicago.”

  Her mama had been down there in the field with them and she’d laughed as she looked from Cassidy’s daddy to the little tree twigs sticking up out of the ground. “You don’t be thinking on any trips to Chicago just yet, missy. All your daddy has right now is an orchard of hope.”

  “Your mama could be right,” her daddy said as he laid his big hand on Cassidy’s head and let it rest there a minute. “But hope’s a mighty fine thing to have. Your mama won’t argue with me on that one. As best I recall, there’s even something about it in her Bible. Faith, hope, and charity.”

  Her mama had smiled at her daddy and reached for his hand. It made Cassidy feel all happy inside when her mama and daddy held hands like that. She didn’t like it when they fussed about that freedom train her mama was always chasing after.

  That’s why Cassidy didn’t like going to town with her mama, because she never knew when her mama was going to run after the chance to work for that “greater good” Noah had talked about. They dropped Eli and Elise off at Miss Sally’s house, but her mama wouldn’t let Cassidy stay. Said she needed new shoes.

  “You can measure my foot and order them from Miss Sally’s Sears Roebuck catalogue,” Cassidy suggested. She hoped her mama would like that idea, and that way she could stay at Miss Sally’s while her mama went to town.

  “No, no,” her mama said. “They’re having a sidewalk sale in town. The shoe store had an ad in the paper with what looked like good prices, and it’s always better to try a pair of shoes on to get the right fit.”

  Cassidy wanted to say that if it was a white person’s shoe store, they probably wouldn’t let her try on the shoes anyhow, even if her socks were straight off the clothesline and so white they practically sparkled. Cassidy knew. She’d been shoe shopping in the wrong stores with her mama before, but saying something like that to her mama was just like sounding the whistle of that freedom train. She’d be on it in a minute flat, pulling Cassidy right along with her. And that’s why Cassidy wanted to stay at Miss Sally’s, trailing after the twins to keep them from breaking her pretties, instead of going to town.

  Miss Sally had a lot of pretties—glass birds and bells and angels and all sorts of trinkets, as Miss Sally called them. Eli had already broken one of the birds, but Miss Sally just swept up the pieces and threw them in the trash can and never said the first word to their mama. She told Cassidy not to worry about it, that Eli was lots more fun to have around than an old glass bird anyhow.

  The street down through Hollyhill was closed off, and her mama had to go around behind where Noah worked at that newspaper office to park. Then they walked down through an alleyway to the shoe store. The stores all had tables full of stuff out on the sidewalk, and the dress stores even had racks of dresses hanging outside. At the shoe store, their sidewalk table was piled high with sneakers—just what her mama thought Cassidy needed for school.

  The first pair of shoes Cassidy tried on fit, and the clerk even smiled at her when she asked Cassidy if she wanted to wear the new shoes and put her old shoes in the sack. The new ones were a pretty yellow, and Cassidy didn’t want to take them off, so her mama let her wear them away from the store.

  If they’d just walked straight back to the car and gone home, things would have been fine. Maybe even better than fine. But her mama decided they were thirsty. They went in the little restaurant two stores down from the shoe store. Her mother took hold of Cassidy’s hand and started right for the soda counter where there were tall stools with red shiny tops fastened to the floor. Cassidy’s heart was already thumping in her chest even before the waitress stepped in front of them and said, “I’m sorry. We don’t serve coloreds up here. There’s a table for you all in the back.”

  Cassidy looked at the white woman’s face. She didn’t look all that sorry. Everybody in the restaurant had quit talking and was looking at them. It was so quiet that Cassidy was sure her mama and the waitress would be able to hear how her heart was trying to pound a hole right through her chest. She pulled on her mama’s arm. “I’m not all that thirsty, Mama.”

  For a minute, she didn’t think her mama was going to pay any attention to her, but then her mama looked down at her and smiled. “All right, sweetie.”

  Her mama’s smile disappeared when she looked back at the waitress. “When I come back, you can be sure I’ll sit wherever I please.”

  “You might sit down, but we can’t wait on you nowhere but that back table,” the waitress said. For a minute she did look a little sorry as she added, “It’s just the way things are around here.”

  Cassidy cringed as the memory of the dog in Birmingham crept up out of the back of her mind and snarled at her. Sirens started going off in her head. They must have been going off in her mama’s head too.

  “And why’s that?” Cassidy’s mama asked. There was fire in her eyes, but everything else about her turned stiff and cold as she stood tall and glared at the woman.

  Cassidy gently tugged on her mama’s arm again. She didn’t tug hard, because when her mama turned to ice like that, Cassidy was always afraid her mama might just shatter into pieces.

  “Let’s go, Mama.”

  Her mama whirled without another word and went back out on the street. Cassidy had to hurry to keep up. When they passed the alleyway that led up to where they’d parked the car, Cassidy said, “Aren’t we going home?”

  “Not yet, sweetie. I’m taking you to where Noah works. You’ll be fine there.”

  “I want to go back to Miss Sally’s,” Cassidy said as tears began to trickle out of her eyes. “I want us both to go.”

  Her mama slowed up, and her ice glare melted away as she smiled at Cassidy. “Now don’t you be worrying about your mama, sweet child. Your mama knows exactly what needs doing, and it’s going to get done.”

  A little of the smile stayed on her mama’s face as she pulled open the screen door and stepped into the Banner offices. A woman with hair nearly as black as Cassidy’s and covering her head in fat curls looked up from her typewriter. She peered out at them through dark-rimmed glasses and asked, “Can I help you?” She didn’t smile. Cassidy looked down at her new yellow shoes and wanted to go talk to the shoe store clerk again.

  Her mama didn’t seem bothered by the woman’s face. Her smile just got bigger as she held out her hand and stepped over to the woman’s desk. “Hello, you must be Miss Curtsinger. I’m Noah’s mother, Myra Hearndon, and this is my daughter, Cassidy.”

  Cassidy peeked up at the woman behind the desk to see if what her mama had said was going to make any difference in whether she smiled at them or not. The lady was smiling at her mouth, but there wasn’t much of it leaking up to her eyes. “A pleasure to meet you,” she was saying. She barely touched Cassidy
’s mother’s hand before she jerked it away to pull a pink tissue from somewhere and blot her nose with it. She looked kind of scared.

  Cassidy wasn’t surprised. A lot of people got uneasy when her mama fastened her eyes straight on them. Her mama was always telling her and Noah, “Don’t you ever be afraid to look somebody straight in the eyes. You be proud of who you are.” She had better luck with Noah than she did Cassidy.

  “The same here,” her mama was saying. “I do so appreciate Rev. Brooke giving Noah a job.”

  “David felt we needed the help with our regular hand out with a broken leg. We have to get the Banner printed on time.”

  “And Noah is enjoying the work. He says you’ve been working here since even before Rev. Brooke and that the Reverend says you’re the glue that holds the place together.”

  “Well, I do my best,” Miss Curtsinger said. “I’m afraid David doesn’t always have the best business sense when it comes to the financial side of things. Sometimes he trusts in the goodness of people a bit too much. And though I hate to have to say it, people will take advantage of that.”

  “That’s so true, although I suppose trusting in the goodness of people isn’t a bad failing for a preacher to have. At the same time, he’s fortunate to have someone like you to keep things in business order.”

  The lady’s smile was easier now as she warmed to the praise. Cassidy’s mama knew how to put the honey on the bread when she needed to.

  “I guess you’re here to see Noah,” the lady said. “He’s back in the pressroom with Jocelyn. Wesley and David were back there with them, but I think Wesley must have gone up to his apartment awhile ago for a rest, and David went down the street for a little bit. But he won’t be gone long. I’m sure Noah and Jocelyn are fine back there by themselves.” She couldn’t seem to stop chattering as she stood up and led them toward a door at the back of the room.

  “Don’t you worry,” Cassidy’s mama said. “His father and I have taught Noah how to behave himself.”