Kind-Hearted Woman

by Spaeth, Janet

  As he sank to the ground, a carving on the fence post spun by him. It was a roughly scratched outline of a cat.

  Kind-hearted woman. That’s what it meant. Some hobo before him had taken the time to alert others that this farm housed a woman who would feed the homeless.

  That was what he needed, a kind-hearted woman.

  As the clouds took over his brain entirely, he smiled. More words from the Jeremiah passage came to him: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.

  ❧

  “Lolly!”

  Bud and George kicked open the screen door and made their way to the front room, where they dropped a man onto the sagging cushions of the worn old couch.

  “Get some water,” George said as he examined the man’s face, lifting his eyelids and feeling his pulse in his neck. “He’s still alive, but just barely. Hurry, Lolly.”

  As she picked up the pitcher from the kitchen table, the man groaned. She poured some water into a bowl and carried it to the living room, putting it on the table beside the couch.

  “Here,” she said, handing George a towel she’d snatched up from the kitchen. It was one she’d embroidered—a teakettle with a smiling face. It seemed so incongruous here with a stranger unconscious on her couch.

  Beside them, on the shelf next to the crystal vase that had been their parents’, a Bakelite clock ticked away the seconds.

  George splashed the water on the man’s face and dribbled a few drops into his mouth. “He’s dehydrated,” he announced. “Look at his lips, how dry they are. There’s hardly any liquid in him at all.”

  “Yeah,” Bud agreed. “His canteen was on the ground beside him, sis, empty and dry as one of Bruno’s bones.”

  “He hasn’t had enough food or water to keep body and soul together,” Lolly said softly. “He’s so thin.”

  “Look at this.” George pinched a bit of the skin on the back of the man’s hand. “See how it stays up in this peak? That means he’s really parched.”

  Lolly checked on her own hand. The skin spread right back to its original state. “I didn’t know that was how you tested for dehydration. How’d you know that, George?”

  He shrugged. “It was in the chickens manual I got from the county. Figure a body’s a body, whether it’s a chicken or a man.”

  “Did it tell you how to treat it?” Bud asked as he studied the man on the couch.

  “I know we shouldn’t give him a lot of food and water all at once,” George said. “Just give him a small amount at a time, even if he wakes up and asks for more.”

  “ ‘Even if he wakes up’?” Lolly repeated. “He is going to wake up, isn’t he? I mean, he’s not going to, you know, well. . .”

  “He’ll be fine,” Bud said, standing up and wiping his hands on his dungarees.

  George moistened the tea towel embroidered with the smil-ing teakettle and wiped it across the man’s face. “Why, he’s just a young man,” he said as the dirt came off. “No older than me.”

  Lolly’s heart twisted as she looked from the man to her brothers. How lucky they were to be together, rather than living the life this poor man had been.

  He groaned again, and the three stared at him.

  “I believe we have company, Lolly,” Bud said at last. “Bring out the fine china.”

  two

  Together. It is the most beautiful word in the English language. Together. We are not meant to live apart, not when God has joined our hearts in timeless love. We will grow together like the well-watered vine, climbing up the trellis of the years. It is our destiny, our forever.

  The three siblings stood around the worn sofa, watching intently as the man stirred. His face was ashen against the faded burgundy and green tapestry of the couch, his shoulders gaunt in the sunken cushions.

  Breathe. Lolly stared at the man’s chest, willing it to rise and fall. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. She realized she was inhaling and exhaling with him, as if her own strong lungs could give him air.

  One of the neighbor’s cows lowed from a far field. Bruno barked in response, and the chickens clucked among themselves.

  The cows belonged to Ruth Gregory’s family. George was, everyone assumed, going to marry Ruth one day, but he was slow to speak his piece. For the past three years, whenever he was in town, he’d dawdle at her café in town, sipping a cola. The cow was more vocal than he was, Lolly thought.

  It seemed odd, almost as if there were two worlds existing side by side, the normal everyday one out in the field and the yard, and the drama unfolding in the house.

  The stranger’s mouth twitched, and his eyelids flew open, his gaze latching almost immediately onto Lolly. “Sah kaahraah aah,” he said, his eyes, as dark brown as George’s coffee, not moving away from hers.

  “A cigarette!” Bud said under his voice. “The man wants a cigarette!”

  “No, I think he said he wants a cigar.” George frowned at the stranger.

  “How do you get cigar out of ‘Sah kaahraah aah’?” Bud argued. “He’s clearly asking for a cigarette, aren’t you, pal? Do you want a cigarette?”

  “Or a cigar?” George persisted, leaning in toward the man.

  “You want a cigarette, don’t you?” Bud shook the stranger’s elbow lightly. “A cigarette, right? See, he nodded.”

  “Oh, will you two stop?” Lolly said, pushing her brothers away. “You’re taking up all of his air, and besides that, we don’t have a cigar or a cigarette, so what does it matter?”

  “I suppose,” Bud grumbled, “although I’m sure that’s what he said.”

  “Sah kaahraah aah,” the stranger said again, and this time his mouth slid into a faint smile that held for a moment and then slipped away as his eyes shut again.

  “Well, no cigar for you, mister,” George said, “at least not until you get your strength back.”

  I’m going to need Your help here, Lolly prayed silently. I’ve got a fellow here who is in terrible shape, and then, well, I’ve got my brothers.

  A flurry of barks from the door and a clatter of claws on the wooden floor announced the arrival of the dog. Bruno pushed his way in front of them and sniffed the stranger, starting at the top of his head, going all the way to his toes, and then back up again.

  Before she could react, the dog licked the man’s face enthusiastically. The stranger didn’t even flinch as the huge dog’s tongue left a trail of slobber through the dirt that still encrusted the man’s face despite George’s ministrations.

  “Get back, Bruno! Honestly!” She tugged at him and pulled him away.

  The dog flopped onto the floor, sprawling out as if his exertions had tired him out entirely.

  Lolly shut her eyes. See what I mean, God? Even the dog is a daily challenge for me.

  “I wonder where this fellow came from,” Bud said. “He looks like he’s been on the road for quite a while.”

  “I’m going to go back to the spot where we found him and poke around, see if there’s something that might give us a clue as to who he is.” George whistled and Bruno sprang to alertness. “Come on, boy. We’ve got some investigating to do.”

  “I’ll come, too.” Bud stopped and looked back and forth between his sister and the man on the couch. “You going to be all right?”

  “I think so.” Lolly looked at their guest. “He doesn’t look like he’s got the energy to swat a fly.”

  “Well, if he lives—” Bud began, but George walloped him in the shoulder, stopping the sentence if not the thought.

  “He looks to be a tough sort,” George said gruffly, looking away as he said the words.

  Lolly turned her attention to the man on the couch. He looked anything but tough. His skin’s underlying pallor lent a blue-white tinge to his sunburned face, and his breathing was shallow and rapid.

/>   She touched the back of his wrist, carefully, tentatively, and his fingers twitched in response. She pulled her hand away and tucked it behind her back, as if hiding it would undo the action.

  The man muttered something and jerked his head back and forth spasmodically. Then he began to speak. Through his parched and split lips, unintelligible words, no more than broken syllables, spun out in a papery stream.

  Lolly knew he wasn’t talking to her. He couldn’t even know that she was there, he was in such bad shape. His eyes clenched, as if squeezing away a bad image, but never opened.

  Perhaps he was delirious. Her knowledge of medicine was minimal at best. The only things she’d had to deal with were the occasional colds, sore throats, and stomach distresses, and the treatment for those had been simply to let the illnesses run their courses.

  Was that the wisest thing to do here? Should she call for the doctor? And how on earth would she pay for his visit?

  She couldn’t let the man simply die on her couch.

  The only thing she could do was pray. She swallowed hard and put her hand on the man’s chest—right over where she was pretty sure his heart was—shut her eyes, and prayed aloud: “Please, dearest God, make him well and whole. Please. Please, God. Bring him back to health.”

  She could feel each of his ribs as his chest rose and fell with every labored breath. He was as thin as his shirt.

  She opened her eyes and looked at the man again. Whoever he was, he seemed to be teetering on the edge of life. “Stay alive,” she whispered to him.

  There had to be a reason God had brought him to their home. Maybe in time she’d know, but one thing she’d learned in her nineteen years was that God had His own timetable, and it might not be until she was in the great hereafter that she would learn the whys and why nots of life on this earth.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t have questions. Why, for example, did good people suffer? Why did God let that happen? Why did their parents die so young?

  Why was there drought? Why didn’t He command the rain to fall? Why was the depression tearing so many lives apart? And when people were hungry, why didn’t He send down some of that manna?

  She sat next to the couch, matching the rise and fall of his chest, breath for breath, willing him to keep inhaling and exhaling, until frenetic barking and loud voices announced that her brothers and the dog had come back.

  “We found it!” Bud called from the doorway, then clapped his hand over his mouth as he glanced at the prone figure on the couch. “Is he dead?” he asked in a stage whisper.

  George pushed him aside. “You have the manners of a coyote,” he informed his brother, “and you smell just as bad.” Then, gently, to his sister, “How’s he doing?”

  “The same. What did you find?”

  “Wait until you see!” Bud slid across the floor to her. No matter how many times she’d told him to stop, he insisted on doing it. He’d never grow up. The boy was almost seventeen and still acting like an adolescent. Lolly despaired of his ever behaving like a grown-up.

  Automatically she chided, “Slide across that floor one more time, and I’ll polish out the scratches with your head.”

  He waved away her complaints and held out a pack. It was dusty and soiled, and Lolly drew back. It smelled like, well, like a man on the road would smell.

  “And George has got the fella’s bedroll.”

  Before Lolly could interrupt the inevitable, Bud dumped the contents of the pack on the floor next to the sofa, and George untied the bedroll and let it unfurl. The end struck the little table with the bowl of water they’d used to clean off the man’s face, and she caught it before it spilled.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that,” she said. “That’s just wrong, going through his things like that.”

  “It’s not like he’s in any position to give us permission,” George pointed out. “And this might give us some important information, like maybe he’s got some disease or something that we should know about.”

  “Some disease? There’s a cheerful thought.” Lolly shook her head. “Even if he had a disease, we couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Oh, do you suppose?” Bud asked, stopping his investi-gation of the contents of the man’s pack.

  “Do I suppose what?” Lolly asked.

  “What if he has one of those terrible diseases that’s really catchable—”

  “Contagious,” George said.

  “Contagious, and now we’ll all get it and die? And they’ll come to find out why we haven’t been to town for a month, and they’ll find our shriveled-up bodies, and they’ll realize that there are four bodies and only three of us, and it’ll be a huge mystery who the extra—”

  God, isn’t it enough that I have these two buffoons to watch over, and now you give me an unconscious man, too?

  George rolled his eyes at his brother and gathered up the blanket and flattened pillow that had been in the stranger’s sleeping bundle. “Nothing here. I’ll put it out on the fence to air out. Lolly, maybe once the bedding isn’t quite so pungent you can take a look at it and see if it’s worth laundering.”

  “Take this extra shirt and pants with you,” Bud said, tossing the offending items toward his brother. “They’re a bit heavy on the stink, too.”

  George paused before leaving the room. “So was there anything of interest at all in the pack?”

  Bud shook his head. “There isn’t anything in there, really. One of those free Bibles they give away and a comb and a toothbrush. I know, I know. Take it out of the house, too. Who knows what all is crawling on it.”

  Lolly looked at the man on the couch. His breathing had deepened, but it was still erratic. “He looks to be about your size, George. Do you suppose you could clean him up a bit more and get him into some of your old clothes?”

  “Sure. Let me get his stuff taken care of, and then Bud and I will work on him. Come on, Bud, help me out.”

  The brothers left the house, carrying the stranger’s things with them, and she turned to their silent guest, humming as she studied his face. She ran through hymn after hymn, singing the words when she could remember them, and letting the melody carry the song when she couldn’t recall the lines.

  He looked so frail, so helpless, lying there. His dark hair made the ashen color of his skin even more pronounced. He must have been on the road a long time to be this thin. His wrist bones angled out. Had he been hungry? Had to go without meals? Been forced to beg for food?

  She and her brothers constantly battled the curse of need. There was never enough money, or maybe only just enough to keep them one step ahead of losing the farm entirely. They were still safe from this gnawing want that was plaguing the nation. At the very least, they had food. It wasn’t fancy, and there were times when it wasn’t very good, but at least it was there.

  Was that why he’d come here? She’d fed other travelers in need, but they’d always thanked her and gone on. None had stayed. Of course, this man didn’t have the option of choosing to stay or leave.

  The verse from Hebrews sprang to her mind: Be not for-getful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

  “Is that what you are?” she asked softly. “Are you an angel?” She shook her head. “I somehow don’t think so, but angel or not, you are welcome to stay here and recover. We will take care of you as long as you need, whatever your reason for rambling is.”

  The Bible was on the floor, right where Bud had left it. Typical of her brother, she thought, to leave it where it landed when he’d scrounged through the contents of the backpack.

  More from idle habit than anything else, she opened the Bible—and saw a name written there in pencil. Colin Hammett.

  “Is that your name? Colin?”

  The figure on the couch didn’t stir, and she picked up the pack to replace the Bible. It wasn’t at all what
she’d expected. The bag was made of fine leather and lined with beautiful lustrous fabric, although the piece hadn’t weathered its time outside too well.

  Someone must have taken pity on this man of the road and given him this bag to use. He certainly didn’t seem the type to be able to afford it on his own.

  One day he would tell her the story of his life. In order to do that, though, he’d have to wake up.

  She sighed and looked at him. “One day at a time, Colin. One day at a time.”

  ❧

  He wanted to open his eyes, to slide from this darkness back into the world. A woman’s voice reached into the void, speaking his name. Colin.

  An incredible thirst reached into his mouth and down his throat. He wanted to speak, and he tried, but the motion made his lips sting with nearly unbearable pain, and he slipped back under the edges of the darkness.

  Waves. Sound came in waves, muffled, as if he were under the water at Jones Beach on Long Island. He was swimming, gliding through the dark waters. Overhead he could hear the cadence of conversation but nothing came together to form recognizable words.

  Except his name. Colin.

  Where was he? Who was speaking?

  His brain wouldn’t work, wouldn’t stay on a thought. It skipped and skittered its way through his memories, searching for tags of something, anything, that could claim these sounds.

  A dog barked. But that didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be a dog. It should be a cat. A kind-hearted cat.

  No, that wasn’t right. Not a kind-hearted cat. A cat. A cat and a kind-hearted woman.

  The barking was suddenly very close, and something slimy slurped across his face. Voices spoke sharply, and he was suddenly being lifted into the air.

  His eyes sprang open, and the faces and shoulders of two young men were only inches from him.

  “He’s awake!” the older one said.

  “Well, don’t drop him,” the other fellow said. “Lolly would kill us if we killed him, especially after we’ve saved him.”

  Every part of his head tried to piece together what his eyes and ears were telling him. None of this made sense.