by Ruth White
Then he goes on with his sermon, and after a few minutes he seems to relax and get into it. But I don’t hear a thing he says. When he’s done preaching, Silver sits down in a chair beside the podium, and the thin boy reads more scripture. I watch the trees against the sky outside the window, trying to seem indifferent to Silver Shepherd. Just because he’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen doesn’t mean I have to act as silly as these other girls.
After the thin boy closes with a prayer, he says to us, “And now I hope all of you will stay for dinner on the ground, right out yonder on the hillside.”
And the youth service breaks up. The door is thrown open and sunshine pours into the room. Everybody goes out into it. This could be the hill in the song that the old rugged cross stood on. It slopes in stages down to the road so that there are level places, where some women have set up folding tables among the flowers and grass.
Now they are placing bowls and platters of food on the tables. I see fried chicken and ham, greens and potato salad, corn bread, biscuits and butter, peas and corn, and I don’t know what all. It makes my mouth water just to look at it.
“That’s a nice dress, April,” someone whispers at my elbow.
I whirl around to find out who it is, and I’m so surprised I can’t say anything back. It’s Silver Shepherd. He’s a few inches taller than me, and up close I can see that his eyes are the color of morning glories.
“Thanks,” is all I can think to say. I try to smile, but my mouth has gone so dry, my lips are sticking to my teeth. So now we’re both a bundle of nerves.
“I saw you in Black River the other day,” he mumbles.
I can only nod.
“Do you think you’d like to eat dinner on the ground with me?” he asks, and glances around at the girls who were sitting beside me earlier. They are watching us. “I mean … unless … you’re planning to sit with somebody else.”
“Sure. I’d like to,” I say quickly. “But I’ll have to ask my aunt whenever she comes out.”
As more food is piled up on the table, Silver and I just stand there. I think I’m in shock, and he seems to be at a loss for words. After a while the rest of the grownups emerge from the church. I see Aunt June, and she waves to me.
“Be right back,” I say to Silver as I sprint to Aunt June.
“Can we stay for dinner on the ground?” I ask breathlessly.
Please. Please. Please. I don’t say that out loud, but I think it’s obvious to her that I want to stay here more than I want to breathe air.
Aunt June looks into my eyes, then looks at Silver. She smiles and winks at me. “I reckon the men can fend for themselves today. We’ll stay.”
“Oh, thank you!” I say, clasp her arm briefly, then run back toward Silver.
He is standing there watching me, and I slow down as I draw near.
“She says okay,” I tell him.
“Good!” he says.
We fall into silence again, and I search my brain for something to say. Finally, I remember that the weather is a good topic of conversation, so I mention what a nice day it is. Silver agrees. Then he asks if I like school and what grade I’m in. He’ll be a sophomore, which is a year ahead of me. Where is my family? He’s from Lorain, Ohio, and his dad is a minister. They came to the hills to evangelize, and they are living in a trailer in Black River.
“My dad got the calling to preach three years ago,” Silver says, “and that’s when he realized that our name—Shepherd—is not just a name but a calling. He says God has called us to be shepherds of lost souls.”
“You got the call too?” I ask.
“Yeah, I got the call from Dad.”
He smiles at me then, and I smile back. “And how do you like it?”
He looks away toward the hills. “I got mixed feelings about it,” he admits.
“So you’ve been here for three years?”
“No, one year. We were in War, West Virginia, for two years before we came here.”
“Was that your dad in the big sanctuary today?”
“No, he does guest ministry at a different place every Sunday. Today he’s over in another county.”
“Aunt June and I go to a different church every Sunday too,” I tell him.
Somebody says grace and we get in line for the food. Silver stands behind me and I can feel his breath on my hair when he talks. Do I like chicken, he wants to know, or ham? Do I like sweets? He had a cat once that loved angel food cake. He called her Angel. Now all the other kids are staring at us like we’re Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. It’s the first time in my life I have felt like the star of the show. Maybe it’s my turn.
“I think April is the coolest name I ever heard,” he compliments me.
I don’t correct him. He can call me anything he wants.
“No cooler than Silver,” I tell him.
His arm brushes mine as we fill our plates. We sit among the wildflowers together, and chat while we pick at our food. I see Aunt June as if she’s a memory, floating around over there talking and eating with somebody she knows. She catches my eye and smiles at me, but I am in another place, another time—on a hill far away.
12
I come to the garden alone,
while the dew is still on the roses.
I don’t know what time it is, but I know it’s real early, even for me. I couldn’t sleep anymore. My feet are wet as I wander around in the cucumber patch like a girl who is lost and does not care. I love this garden.
There are tiny gossamer webs in the greenery, and when I touch them with my toe they dissolve. A mourning dove is crying somewhere in the misty woods. A thin fog hangs in the hollows between the hills.
“Hidy, Garnet!”
That’s Mitzi leaning over the fence, her red curls ablaze. I throw up a hand to her and go over and sit in the grass. On her side she sits too.
“Your hair looks purty in a horse’s tail,” she tells me.
I laugh. “You mean a ponytail.”
She is eating again, but today her breakfast does not make me hungry. My appetite left me yesterday. When I finally got food on my plate and sat down with Silver, I couldn’t eat. He didn’t eat much either.
“I met a boy,” I whisper to Mitzi, like there’s anybody to hear.
“I know me a bunch of boys,” she comes back.
“I mean a cute boy,” I tell her. “And he likes me!”
That’s when Mitzi lets out this unearthly squeal. But it’s okay, I guess, because she goes into such a high register, I think only the neighborhood dogs can hear her.
She has to know all about Silver Shepherd, and I tell her.
“I like him too,” I confess to her. “He asked for my phone number.”
“Did ja give hit to ’im?”
“I don’t know Aunt June’s number, but he said he would look it up in the phone book.”
“I betcha anythang he’ll ast you out on a date,” Mitzi says.
“Mom won’t let me date,” I say. “Aunt June prob’ly won’t either. I’ll not be fifteen till December.”
“Maybe she’ll let ’im come to the house and court you.”
“Maybe. But his dad’s a preacher.”
“Preachers ain’t no fun,” Mitzi says. “This is a sin, that’s a sin. You cain’t do nothing.”
I look toward the sun as it tries to burn away the haze. I love the sun. I love everything today, and everybody.
“I heerd ’bout June being sick,” Mitzi interrupts my thoughts.
“She’s feeling better,” I tell her. “It was nothing serious.”
“That’s not what I heerd!” Mitzi says. “They say she’s got a thang growin’ inside ’er.”
I am perplexed. “You mean a baby?”
Mitzi laughs. “No, silly. It’s something she don’t want growin’ in there.”
All my airy-fairy feelings go poof and fly over the mountaintops.
“Who told you that?” I ask.
“Everybody’s sayin’ it,” Mitzi tells me. “It�
��s the talk goin’ around.”
Something growing inside her? What will we do without you?
I stand up on unsteady legs and see Poppy at the window gesturing for me to come in.
“I gotta go, Mitzi,” I tell her, and we say goodbye.
In the kitchen I find Poppy standing at the counter cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Is Aunt June sick?” I ask him.
“No, I think she’s just sleeping in,” he tells me.
“No, I mean does she have a growth inside her?”
Poppy stops what he’s doing and turns to me slowly. “Who told you that?”
“It’s the gossip,” I tell him. “Is it true?”
Poppy looks out the window at Mitzi and lets out a long sigh.
“Yes, Garnet, and that’s one reason I visit as often as I can. I try to help out as much as possible.”
“Is she going to die?”
Poppy will not look at me. “The doctors are not sure when …” Poppy does not finish that thought. “But we want to make her happy in the time she has left.”
I am swallowed up by sadness. I didn’t know my feelings could run so high and then so low in such a short time. I don’t want to lose Aunt June now that I have found her.
“Oh, Poppy! I’ve been a burden on her, haven’t I?” I go on before he can answer. “That’s why Uncle Otis and Emory resented me. They thought it would be too hard on her to have me here.”
“They may have thought that at first.”
“And now?”
“Everybody sees that you are a blessing, even Otis and Emory.”
“A blessing? Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“A blessing for sure. June’s been more active since you got here. She’s started cooking again. It’s always been her favorite thing to do. She loves having you go to church with her, and it tickled her good to take you shopping. She always wanted a girl, but …”
Poppy does not finish his sentence. He sighs and turns back to his eggs.
“And you know,” he goes on, “you have been a blessing to me too.”
“How’s that, Poppy?”
“Finding you like this when I am just about to lose my only daughter. It’s meant the world.”
Neither of us speaks for a time. I set the table for two.
“Emory overheard June and Otis talking about it,” Poppy continues after a while. “But Avery knows only that she’s sick a lot, not that she won’t get well. We’ll have to tell him eventually, but not yet. And don’t let on that you know. She wouldn’t like it.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Emory and Avery don’t come down for breakfast, and I’m glad, because I like being alone with Poppy.
While we are cleaning up the kitchen, I say quickly, “Thank you for the shopping money.”
“Oh, you’re quite welcome,” he says. “But most of that money came from your uncle Otis.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he says, then adds, “Maybe you can help June today. She wants to give herself a Tommy.”
“A what?”
“You know, one of those home permanents.”
“You mean a Toni.”
“I reckon. Toni, Tommy, whatever.”
We smile a sad sort of smile at each other.
It’s late in the afternoon when Aunt June comes out of her room. She seems in good spirits, and she looks like a teenager dressed in dungarees and a big old shirt that could belong to Uncle Otis. In the kitchen she drinks a glass of iced tea and eats half of a sandwich.
“Poppy says you might need help with your Toni,” I say to her with as much pep in my voice as I can muster. “Well, I’m here to tell you, I have a lot of experience with home permanents. Mom never had to perm her hair because it was naturally curly, but I helped Lily with hers all the time.”
“Good!” she says. “Let’s do it now.”
Upstairs we pull a chair into the bathroom and go to work on her hair. She mixes the permanent solution, which stinks to high heaven. We start laughing and cracking jokes as I roll her wet hair around the curlers and tuck the ends into place. We are on the bottom row of curlers when I hear the phone ringing down in the October room, and my heart leaps. Could it be … ?
We can hear a deep male voice say, “Hello,” and Aunt June says, “I guess Otis is home from work.”
I wait. Footsteps coming slow up the stairs. Coming so slow. Hurry, hurry, hurry. I swear to Pete, if he moves any slower, he’ll be going backwards.
“June?” It’s Uncle Otis’s voice.
“Come on in,” Aunt June tells him. “We’re just putting in a Toni.”
Uncle Otis peeps around the edge of the bathroom door, which is partially open.
“I think somebody has a sweetheart,” he says, and I feel my face go hot. “And he’s on the telephone wanting to speak to Ap-ril.”
He draws out the name “April” like it has a dozen syllables in it.
“Is that so?” Aunt June says, and smiles at me in the mirror. “Could it be the boy preacher from the Rugged Cross Chapel?”
“Preacher?” Uncle Otis says.
But I am out of there and down the stairsteps and into the October room where the telephone receiver is apart from its cradle and resting on the forest green couch.
13
Hello?” I am breathless.
“Hi there.” He’s breathless too.
Yeah, it’s him. It’s Silver. I collapse onto the couch, hug the phone to my ear, and close my eyes.
“It’s you.”
“Yeah. What are you doing?”
“Nothing. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Then silence.
“Say something,” he says at last.
“Something,” I say.
“Say something else.”
“Something else.”
We both laugh.
“Okay, I can see,” he says, “that I’m going to have to do all the work. What did you do today?”
“I gave Aunt June a permanent.”
“A permanent what?”
“A permanent wave in her hair, silly. I bet your mom gets permanents.”
He doesn’t answer. His mom? He has not mentioned his mom. Wonder why not?
“Where is your mom?” I ask him.
“She’s still in Ohio.” There’s sadness in his voice. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“Why didn’t she come with you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Evangelizing is Dad’s thing. Mom doesn’t care much about it.”
“So, are they separated?”
“I guess you could say that. But not legally. I mean they’re still married and all, but … What about your dad, April? You told me your mom is working in Florida, but you didn’t say a thing about your dad.”
“Aunt June is my dad’s sister, but nobody seems to know where he is, and I don’t care. Mom raised me. But now she’s run off too, and dumped me here like a kid dumps a toy when he’s through with it.”
I bite my lip. I did not mean to say all that, and I hope nobody else heard me.
Silver is quiet for a moment, then he says, “Look on the bright side, April. If your mom hadn’t gone to Florida and left you here with your aunt, you and I still wouldn’t know each other.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Then we talk about everything. We can’t put our thoughts into words fast enough. One thing he says is that he would not be in the ministry if his dad didn’t insist.
“He thinks I have a gift for it.”
“But you don’t really like it?”
“No, I don’t. But you remember Douglas, the boy who read scripture for me at church yesterday?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“He’s on fire to preach. He thinks he’s been called by God to do it, and I think that’s how you have to feel to be a good minister.”
“How did you get the job?” I ask.
“A couple of months ago t
he deacons called for auditions, and Dad pressured me to try out. I didn’t think I would be picked, but I was.”
“So I guess they liked you best.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know why. Douglas is better than me.”
I know why. It’s because he’s cute, and a hit with the kids, especially the girls. But I don’t say that.
“You do just fine, Silver, and you’ll get better with practice.”
“Well, it makes Dad happy, and I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“You should tell him how you feel.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah, if your heart’s not in it, your dad should know.”
“You could be right,” he says in a slow, thoughtful way.
Somebody comes into the room, and I keep my eyes closed. I don’t know who it is. I just wish they’d go away. I want to be alone with Silver.
“Supper’s ready, Garnet.”
That’s Emory’s voice. I guess they sent him to get me.
“Who was that?” Silver says.
“My cousin Emory. Supper’s ready.”
“Oh, okay. Listen, there’s a tent revival this week down at Black River. My dad is delivering the message on Wednesday night. Do you think you can make it?”
“Wednesday night? I’ll ask Aunt June. She may want to go and take me.”
“I’ll look for you.”
I hang up and turn to the eyes of August Rose on the mantel. And I remember something. When I was a little kid I used to pretend that my dad was somewhere watching me. He would be at the classroom door, or peeping out from behind a tree, or watching from a window in a building or from a parked car—any where. Secretly observing.
And when I felt that way, I would show off for him. I would talk louder than usual, and try to say clever things. Or I would sing for him, because back then I actually thought I could sing. Or sometimes I would do a little dance. Or I would run faster than anyone ever ran.
But now I toss my ponytail at him and leave the room. After all, I was only a child back then, and not very smart. I still believed that maybe, just maybe, he cared enough to come back and see me. That’s how silly I was.
They are waiting supper for me in the kitchen, quiet and staring as I walk in. I sit down beside Aunt June. She has a plastic cap on her hair while the permanent solution does its work.