THE HOMEPLACE

by Gilbert, Morris

  “I want to see them dogs,” Maeva said.

  “I’m gonna take these three young’uns with me to see the dogs, Forrest. I’ll bring ’em back in good shape.”

  “Thanks, Warden.” Forrest had Corliss on his lap, and she was stroking his face. “She sure looks like her mama, doesn’t she, Lanie?” “Just like her, Daddy.”

  “Now, tell me all about how you managed to save the place.”

  “It wasn’t me, Daddy. It was the Lord.” Lanie related the full story to him, and she took an envelope out of the purse. “Here’s the mortgage. You see, it says ‘Canceled.’ It’s all paid for. When you get out, you can come right home to your own place.”

  Forrest Freeman ran his hand over the paper. He did not look up for a long time, and when he did, Lanie was somewhat shocked to see tears glimmering in his eyes. “I never was much of a crybaby, but this sure touches me. You done fine, Lanie.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Yes, it was. You’re the one who’s held this family together, and I’m mighty proud of you, Muff.” He held his arms out, and Lanie hugged him. “You’re a grown woman,” he whispered, his face against her smooth cheek. “Beautiful like your mama and tough like me.”

  Lanie held onto her father and then drew back and took a deep breath. “I’ve got somethin’ else to tell you. It’s something Mr. Pierce told me.” She proceeded to tell him about the missing witness. “Did you know that she was in the next room?”

  “No, I didn’t have no idea, but I know Thelma Mays. She’s about as worthless as Duke and Alvin.”

  “But if they find her, and she tells the truth, Mr. Pierce says that’ll make a difference. Then he could get you a new trial.”

  Hope came into Forrest’s eyes. “That would be a miracle, but God’s done miracles before, hasn’t He?”

  “And He’ll get you out of here too. I know He will, Daddy.”

  The two talked quietly for a while, and finally he asked, “How’s that Dr. Merritt?”

  Something changed in Lanie’s face, and he did not miss it. “He’s engaged to Louise Langley.”

  “I know. Aunt Kezia told me. Listen, I don’t know any man who deserves you, but this doctor sounds like he comes close.”

  “Oh, Daddy, I’m just a little girl to him!”

  “You ain’t no little girl no more, and if he’s as smart as Aunt Kezia says he is, God’s gonna open his eyes. And when he looks at you, he’s gonna see a full-grown woman that’s got love to offer such as he’s never dreamed of.”

  Lanie dropped her head and stared down at her hands.

  Forrest laughed. “I believe God’s going to get me out of this place, honey, and I think He’s gonna do somethin’ with you. Now, come on. I want you to see those dogs. The best one is one called Booger. He reminds me of you in a way.”

  “I remind you of a dog called Booger? That’s awful, Daddy!”

  “He’s the pick of the litter, hon. He’s loyal and just filled up with affection. Just lookin’ for a place to put it.” He squeezed her, then kissed her cheek. “Just like you. Come on now. Let’s go see old Booger.”

  C H A P T E R 32

  Getting everyone to bed took longer than Lanie had anticipated. Even Corliss Jeanne seemed to have caught the excitement of the day, and it took more than an hour before she went to sleep.

  Finally Lanie tiptoed out of the baby’s room, leaving the door open so she could hear if she cried. Lanie realized she was very tired. She went into the kitchen. The fire had burned down to coals in the cook-stove, but the coffee pot was still on. Getting a cup, she poured it full and then sat on a kitchen chair and let the silence of the house soak into her. A good feeling came to her. For months she had been living on the edge of fear—fear of losing the house, of the children being put in foster homes, of so many other things. She sipped the coffee and let herself relax and felt the weariness seep into her bones.

  Beau came over and plopped his big legs down in her lap. She grunted and laughed. “You want something good to eat? You always want something. Let’s see if we’ve got any biscuits.”

  She found two overlooked biscuits that were rather hard. She broke these into quarters and tossed one of the morsels to Beau, who snapped it out of the air. He swallowed it in one gulp and nudged her with his nose.

  “Don’t be so greedy. You’re going to get them all. I declare, Beau, I believe you’d eat rocks if I fed them to you.”

  Beau had just finished the last of the biscuits when Lanie heard a tap on the front door. Beau growled low, and Lanie wondered who would possibly call at this time of night.

  She turned on the front light and looked through the glass. Roger Langley was standing outside. She opened the door and stepped out.“Roger, what are you doing here? It’s late.”

  “I had to see you, Lanie.”

  “Everybody’s asleep. If we’re going to talk, we’d better stay out here.”

  “That’s all right. I just came by to tell you something.” Roger seemed agitated. He was wearing his football jacket with a big “F” on it for Fairhope, and his fair hair was mussed as if he had forgotten to comb it. He bit his lower lip nervously.

  “What’s wrong, Roger? Is someone ill?”

  “No, it’s not that, but . . . well, to make a long story short, I’ve had a run-in with my dad.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, actually it was about you and your family. A while back I tried to talk Dad out of foreclosing on you. He got angry about it so he told me to leave the house.”

  Lanie stared at him. “The bank didn’t foreclose, so you can go home.”

  “No, I’m not going to do that,” Roger said. He ran his hand across his lean cheek, and then words began pouring out of him. “We’ve been at it again. See, when all this came up, I realized I’d never done anything on my own, Lanie. Everything I’ve done has been to please my dad.”

  “That’s not a bad thing, to want to please your father.”

  “It can be. I’m a man now, and I’ve decided it’s time for me to make it on my own. I’m never going to take any more help from my family. I’ve got some college left, and I’m going to save money so I can pay my own tuition.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? It may take a while.”

  Roger grinned. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m too soft, that I’ve had it easy and, well, I’ve been thinking the same thing myself. Do I really have the right stuff or not?” His lips tightened and he nodded. “That’s what I’ve got to find out. Am I a man or just a kid living off his family?”

  Lanie was surprised. Though she’d never had a similar problem, she knew Roger needed encouragement. “I think that’s wonderful, Roger,” she said firmly, “and you can do it too. I know you can.”

  “Do you really think so, Lanie?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “While I was making this decision I thought about you. I’m going to get a job here for at least six months to save enough money to go back to school in the fall.” He hesitated, then said, “And what I’d like is for us to see more of each other.”

  Lanie could not answer for a moment. “You mean like you want to come courting?”

  “That’s what I mean, Lanie. I think you’re the finest girl I’ve ever known.” He reached out and touched her cheek and smiled. “You’re not the skinny little freshman that beat me out for the award. You’re a grown woman now. What about it? Will it be all right?”

  Lanie could not think for a moment. It never once had occurred to her that Roger Langley would ever be interested in her this way.

  “Why, Roger, I never thought of you like that.”

  “Well, start.” Roger’s grin widened. “I’m just saying we could take in a movie once in a while, go for walks. I’d enjoy someone like you to talk to.”

  “Yes, I think I could do that, Roger, but do you—” The sound of an automobile broke the silence of the night. She turned to see a car pull up. “That’s Dr. M
erritt. What’s he doing here this time of the night?”

  “You didn’t send for him? Nobody’s sick?”

  “No.”

  They both waited until Owen Merritt came up the steps. “Hello, Roger.”

  “Hello, Dr. Merritt.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lanie asked.

  “I came over to talk to you. What are you doing here, Roger? Your dad’s waiting for you.”

  “He’ll wait a long time,” Roger said.

  Owen stared at him. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m moving out. I’m going to make my own way. I’ve just been telling Lanie about it.”

  Owen shook his head. “Don’t be foolish. You’ve got to finish your education.”

  “I will, but I’ve decided that for once, I’m going to do something on my own.”

  Owen’s eyes narrowed, “And you came over to tell Lanie about it?”

  “That and to ask her if she’d be willing to see me. I’ll be working here for at least a few months, so I asked if I could call on her now and then.”

  “Well, you can’t,” Owen said.

  Lanie looked surprised and started to say something, but Owen said, “She doesn’t need any more problems.”

  Roger Langley stared at Owen for a long time, then said, “I know what your problem is, Dr. Merritt. You’re in love with Lanie yourself.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Now you go home and make up with your father.”

  Lanie saw by the porch light that Roger’s accusation had shaken Dr. Merritt. He refused to look at her and raised his voice. “You go on home now. Don’t be a fool.” And then for emphasis, he gave Roger a slight push.

  Roger pushed back. “You go home and make up with Louise. You’re engaged to my sister, and here you are coming to see another woman!”

  “You can leave right now! Stop pushing me.” Owen gave Roger another shove and soon the two men were engaged in a wrestling match.

  Suddenly Lanie cried out, “Both of you, leave!”

  When they stopped struggling and turned to her, she said, “You’re acting like kids. Now go home.”

  Roger straightened his jacket. “I’m sorry it came to this, Lanie. I didn’t come to argue.” He gave her a faint smile and winked, “How about going to the movies tomorrow night?”

  “That’ll be fine, Roger. You go along now.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  As soon as Roger left, Owen said, “Good, he needs to go home. And I need to talk to you.”

  But Lanie said, “So, it’s ridiculous to think that you’d be interested in me.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Tears came to Lanie’s eyes. She could not explain them, and she hated for him to see them. In a tight voice she said, “Go on back to Louise, Owen.”

  “Yeah, go on back to that dishwater blonde.”

  Startled, both Lanie and Owen looked up. They saw Aunt Kezia in her nightgown and a nightcap leaning out of an upstairs bedroom window. She did not turn the volume of her voice down. “Doc Mer-ritt, go someplace and grow up. You come up here, Lanie, and I’ll tell you about what worthless critters men are!”

  Lanie turned to go, but Owen took her arm. “Wait! I don’t think it’s ridiculous that a man would be interested in you. I . . . I think you’re the sweetest girl I’ve ever known.”

  “You’re an engaged man. It’s not proper for you to talk to me like that.”

  Owen made a face and shrugged his shoulders. “I may not be engaged any longer.” He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. “I’m sorry this all happened.” He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “We can’t let anything come between us. You and I,” he said quietly, “I believe we could be something pretty special.” He waited for her to speak and saw that she could not. “Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Lanie watched him leave and then went inside the house. The lights came on, startling her, and the whole family applauded and cheered. Davis put his two fingers in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle.

  “What are you all doing up?” Lanie demanded.

  “We came to see the show,” Maeva said. “You are something, Lanie. You man-killer, you.” Her voice was filled with merriment, and she could not control the grin that came to her lips. “You’ve got a doctor and the son of the richest man in town chasing you.”

  “Yeah, I vote for Roger,” Cody yelped. “He’s rich!”

  “No,” Davis said, “you’d better take Dr. Merritt. He’s already got it made. Besides, we’ll have all of our doctor bills paid.”

  Lanie’s face turned crimson. “You go to bed, every one of you. You should be ashamed, listening in on private conversations!”

  As she ran up the stairs, Maeva called after her, “You ought not to play love scenes on the front porch at the top of your lungs.”

  “You children go to bed,” Aunt Kezia said. Her eyes were flashing.

  “I’ll go up there and tell Lanie how the cow ate the cabbage.”

  Aunt Kezia gave several more dire warnings and went upstairs. She paused outside of Lanie’s door and knocked.

  “Go away!”

  “Let me in, Lanie, I need to talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  But Aunt Kezia persisted and finally said, “If you don’t let me in, I’ll stand here all night.”

  A muffled “Come on in” came through the door.

  Lanie was seated on the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “That was just awful,” she said.

  “No, it was fine.”

  “Fine! How can you say that?”

  “Well, I enjoyed every bit of it. You need to let both them fellows dangle a little while.”

  “I don’t want any men dangling.”

  Aunt Kezia sat down on the bed and put her thin arm around Lanie’s shoulders. “Sure you do, honey. That’s part of growin’ up. A fine girl like you is gonna have fellas comin’ around. And it does a fellow good to dangle. I was hopin’ they’d get into a real fist fight and bloody each other up.”

  “Why in the world would you wish that?”

  “Because you could tell which one of them was serious. Whichever one fought the hardest, that’d be the one to tie to.”

  Lanie sighed and laughed ruefully. “One is engaged and the other has a family that hates me. He doesn’t even have a job.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. Mighty fine,” Aunt Kezia said. “You don’t have to decide nothin’ tonight. Like I say, let ’em dangle.” She pulled Lanie’s head close and kissed her on the cheek. “Let God have a little time to work. He’ll sort it out.” She went to the door, then turned around and winked. “It may not be either one of them, Lanie. I can’t wait to see what God’s got in store for you.” She shut the door softly, and Lanie listened to her footsteps going down the hall. Then she heard the bedroom door close.

  For a long time Lanie sat on the bed. Finally she got up, undressed, put on her gown, and got into bed. She lay there for a few moments, and then Cap’n Brown leaped on the bed and shoved his head against hers. She reached over and stroked his fur, trying to sort out her heart. The moon was silver, a perfect disk. She could see it clearly, and she watched it as she stroked the big cat.

  “There are so many problems,” she whispered. “Daddy’s still in prison and may not get out anytime soon. Davis still can’t read. I don’t know what we’re gonna do about that. And Maeva—she’s just a stick of dynamite waiting to explode.” She weighed the problems that stretched out ahead of her and wondered how to get this family raised.

  “I wish Mama were here, and I wish Daddy weren’t in prison.” But wishful thinking didn’t help. She lay there for a long time and finally started growing sleepy. More than once she thought of what would happen to the Freemans of Fairhope in the days to come, but she prayed, and God gave her a strong sense of freedom and ease.

  Her thoughts turned to the scene that had taken place on t
he front porch, and she smiled. Finally she whispered, “Mrs. Lanie Belle Mer-ritt. How do you like that, Cap’n Brown?”

  “Wow!”

  “You like it? What about this? Mrs. Lanie Belle Langley.”

  Cap’n Brown began to purr like a small engine. He curled up next to her, and as Lanie Belle Freeman dropped off to sleep, the moon cast its argent beams on the face of the sleeping girl and then suddenly was covered by a drifting cloud.

  Read this sample chapter from Gilbert Morris’s The Homeplace

  C H A P T E R 5

  As Lanie poured the skillet full of popcorn into small bowls for individual servings, she was thinking about the two weeks that had passed since the county fair. It was now the end of July, and she should have forgotten all about the Ferris wheel episode, as she had come to think of it, but she had not. Louise Langley and her parents had given her nothing but hard looks since then. Roger had laughed it off saying that they would get over it, but Lanie was not at all sure.

  She had always had a difficult time with the Langleys. Roger and Louise’s younger sister, Helen, was Lanie’s age, so they had grown up in the same circles. Helen always treated the Freemans like they were from the wrong side of the tracks and never bothered to hide her disdain. It didn’t help that Helen was a terrible student and Lanie had constantly made A’s — it just gave Helen one more thing to dislike about the Freemans. Thank goodness Helen’s away at school for a year, Lanie thought. She was glad she didn’t have to deal with Helen’s unpleasantness on top of everything else.

  Putting the bowls of popcorn onto trays, she went into the living room, where the entire family was sitting around listening to Amos and Andy. The radio program was taking the country by storm, and Davis suddenly laughed and shook his head. “That Kingfish is some character. He’s always trying to do in Andy some way or another.”

  “Hey, here’s the popcorn!” Cody yelped. He was lying flat on his stomach reading the newspaper and listening to the radio at the same time. Now he jumped up and grabbed one of the bowls and immediately began stuffing it into his mouth.

  “Don’t eat so fast,” Lanie admonished him as she passed out the rest of the bowls. She sat down and gave a sigh of relief. The fatigue seemed to weigh her down into the rocking chair. “What are you reading, Cody?” she asked during one of the commercials for Rinso soap.