by Lisa Samson
“I loved college. I don’t know why I never went back and got my PhD.”
“Do you have your master’s?”
“I worked on that back in the seventies, honey!”
“Wow. Claudius never told me that.”
As they wound down the road, May couldn’t take her eyes off Sister Ruth. Actually, she wouldn’t take her eyes off her. Much easier that way.
“Claudius said you were married once.”
“Yes, I was. Years and years ago. Jordy was killed in the coal mines, honey. The chain on the drill, the machine that grinds coal off the face of the mine? You know what I’m talking about? Well, it snapped off its gearing and took the left half of Jordy’s face off. He was killed instantly. Twenty-three years old.”
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen.”
“And you never married again?”
Her face softened. “If you’d have known that Jordy, you’d know why. Not another man like him in the universe. And he was mine. For just two short years. But I’m so glad the Lord gave them to me.”
May couldn’t begin to fathom that kind of gratitude in such an obvious tragedy. Sister Ruth must be a little crazy.
“No children?”
“Not until you came along!” And she laughed some more.
They finally turned onto Main Street in Campton and headed out of town for about a mile before taking a left at the sign reading Campton Correctional Institution. The prison rose out of the ground, surrounded by walls topped with razor wire. May had seen a lot of razor wire in Rwanda. She pulled up her sleeve and looked at the scars on her arm.
Sister Ruth tsked-tsked. “My great-nephew is in there right now, God help him. He was such a nice little boy too. I pray for him every day.”
“That’s good.” She hoped so anyway. Maybe Sister Ruth’s prayers rose up to where they were intended.
They sat about a hundred yards before the guardhouse, stopped along the side of the road, just staring.
“He’s in there,” said Sister Ruth. “That man. Right in that building. Wanting to die. I can’t imagine it.”
“I can.”
She turned to May, eyes wide. “Why do you say that, honey?”
“The same thing? Day after day?”
“Well, that’s true.” She stared forward at the prison walls. “I wonder what it’s like on death row, knowing you’re going to die.”
“We all know we’re going to die. Just not the when.”
“That’s true. Thank goodness. I don’t want to know that!”
“I kinda do.”
“Honey! You aren’t serious!”
“I am. Maybe I’d try to do something different if I really knew I didn’t have much time, Sister Ruth.”
“You and a billion other folk. And you don’t have time. Pastor Marlow is going to make sure of that!” She started up the car and began a three-point turn.
“That’s true.” May rested her elbow on the armrest and set her chin in her hand.
“And besides, if we knew death was around the corner, we’d be scared to death and wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. That’s what I think.”
She was probably right.
“I’m thirty-three years old, Sister Ruth.”
“That so? You were just a little thing when you came.”
“I feel a million years old.”
Ruth turned back onto Main Street. “You’ll have to tell me about that sometime.”
“Maybe I will.”
Her right hand left the steering wheel and grabbed onto May’s. She drove that big old truck all the way back to the Mountain Parkway exit without letting go, all the way into the parking lot of the Subway.
She squeezed May’s hand as she shut off the engine. “How about a meatball sub?”
“I don’t know, Sister Ruth.”
“Oh, it’ll be fine.”
The folks behind the counter knew her as Ruthie. Ruthie Askins.
“Why, Ruthie Askins, where you been?” said a large woman with pink rouge in slashes on her white cheeks and large doses of mascara on her eyelashes.
May was glad to see those claw hair clips were still in fashion like they were when she was in college. She loved those things.
“Oh, I been busy as usual, Yvonne.” Only she pronounced it Why-Vonne.
May felt a giggle rise up in her chest.
“Meatball sub on Italian?”
“Make that two.”
“I’ll make them extra good!” Why-Vonne raised the bread knife with conviction.
May placed her hands on her head, ducked under a table, and screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed.
She couldn’t have told you how Sister Ruth got her back to the Suburban. All she could do was cower as close to the door as she could get, her body shaking all over.
It was hot, it was cold, and definitely not in-between.
“We’re getting you home, honey,” Sister Ruth cooed over and over again. “Just hang on in there.”
And she prayed out loud in a soft voice, asking for Jesus to comfort May with his Holy Spirit. By the time they arrived back at Claudius’s farm, May was breathing normally but still feeling like a person out of time and space.
“You go lie on the couch, honey. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll make you a hot cup of tea too.”
“That would be nice.”
“Shh. Don’t say anything. Just rest.”
May wandered into the parlor and lay down, resting her head on an orange crocheted throw pillow. Sister Ruth grabbed an afghan off Claudius’s chair and covered May. She fell asleep under red, green, pink, purple, and yellow squares before the teakettle screamed.
When she woke, Sister Ruth had been gone and come back. “I’m sorry. I truly am,” she announced, looking up from a book on the kitchen table in front of her. “I should have known better than to get you off the farm, go to the prison, and stop at Subway.”
“Like any of this is your fault.” May leaned against the doorjamb.
“And Rwanda made that knife make sense.”
“Yeah, but I use knives here.”
“Not like Why-Vonne. She raised that thing like one of those men now, didn’t she?”
May shrugged. “How about that cup of tea now? Want one?” She went for the kettle.
“No, I’d better go now that I know you’re okay. For now.”
—For now. Why did Sister Ruth always have to say it like it is?
• 9 •
Thank goodness the sun shone the next two days, and day three after the stupid Subway meltdown dawned bright and clear as well. May thought she might buzz through her chores, work up a good sweat, and sit in the sunshine with a book. And not The Awakening, she could tell you that. Sister Ruth brought that by a few weeks before. Usually she’d pick something fun and insincere. The Pirate’s Sultry Ladylove or something like that. Or a mystery. She enjoyed Ellery Queen mysteries. But she didn’t need a book about a woman in misery.
And she’d wear a short-sleeved shirt today too. After all, she wasn’t setting foot off this farm for a good long time. What a disaster!
Eight o’clock rolled around, and no Ruthie Askins.
—Hmm.
There weren’t many flowers left anyway. So May entered the toolshed and gathered ten coils of chicken wire, thirty flat green metal stakes, long twist ties, and a hammer. She loaded them into the wheelbarrow and headed toward the rose garden to begin putting the plants to bed for the winter. She eyed the rusty corral where Bill the mule used to graze away the days. She missed the old beast.
The sun shone warm on her head, heating it up into the roots, and she shook her hair, having left it loose, feeling pretty good. A beautiful day on a beautiful farm. Why not enjoy that?
The barrow bumped over the ground, jarring her arms. Thankfully it didn’t hurt her scars anymore. They’d turned white, not as frightening as they used to be. And her knees only bothered her when the barometric pressure dropped sud
denly.
Wait.
She was just going to relax today.
Oh well. Might as well do it. She could relax tomorrow.
So with the hammer she drove three posts into the ground around each bush. She’d brought enough for about ten bushes. She had sixty now, having doubled Violet’s amount in order to make more posies. Ten dollars apiece for those posies! And the occasional request for wedding bouquets too. The job would take several days. But it didn’t need to be completed until after the first frost. Best to get a good head start.
The last blooms were drying and turning to seed, letting the bush know to stop producing. Violet’s journal told her it was good to help them into dormancy. May stopped pruning mid-August so new green growth wouldn’t be damaged by the frost.
Once the stakes were driven, she unrolled the chicken wire around them, attaching it to the posts with long twist ties. A wire cylinder, about two feet in circumference, stood around each bush.
She checked her watch. Two hours. Not bad.
Not time for lunch yet, so maybe May could relax. The breeze was a bit cool. She hadn’t even broken a sweat. Oh well.
After depositing the wheelbarrow in its place beneath the toolshed window, she headed back inside to make some iced tea. While that was brewing she picked out a gothic romance mystery book and made for the garden circle. The mums would be blooming soon, their buds just beginning to loosen at their tips.
Within a quarter of an hour she was sitting down, sun on her arms, glass of tea beside her, Kirkland Revels in hand. She had to admit it; she liked Victoria Holt and her mysterious passageways, darkened corridors, and brooding relatives. She could read in the sunshine for hours a day if she chose. Why she didn’t do it more often was beyond her.
Two chapters and half a glass later, a car pulled up in the driveway. May sat up and swung her legs over the side to get a view of the Suburban as it stopped, wondering what Sister Ruth was going to say about being late. But it wasn’t the Suburban. It was a Chevy maybe, compact and tidy.
She stood as a man in black pants and a gray shirt emerged, a white, square patch blazing at his throat. Oh boy. A priest.
A priest?
A priest had come to visit? Here? With her wearing a short-sleeved shirt?
Sister Ruth! That rat! She had better not show up here for another two weeks, was all May could say! She couldn’t believe it!
Okay, maybe she had gotten a little cranky, come to think of it.
“Ms. Seymour?” the priest called upon seeing her.
“Yes?” She extricated herself from the garden circle. “Can I help you?”
“I’m John Richards, rector over at St. Thomas.”
“Oh.” The Episcopal church.
He approached and reached out his hand. “Sister Ruth suggested I drop by.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” She shook his hand, noticing the dirt under his fingernails. “Do you garden?”
“Yes.” He withdrew his hand. “And I hate those gloves.”
“Me too.”
“I love the feel of soil.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
Her Kentucky-bred hospitality took over. And he was a man of the cloth, for heaven’s sake. “I was just having a glass of iced tea. Would you like one?”
“Is there sugar in it?”
She liked the mischief behind his hazel eyes and way the folds beside his mouth stayed when his smile left, which wasn’t much so far. His hair was as gray as hers, overgrown, but not looking like it had done so on purpose. He didn’t seem much older than May.
“Lots of sugar.”
“Count me in, then.”
“Come on in.”
He followed her into the kitchen, obviously not feeling the need to talk. She should have felt a little uncomfortable but she didn’t. He had that easy air about him, like he visited with strange recluses every day. Shoot, for all she knew, maybe he did. Maybe there were recluses all over Kentucky, and he was some kind of missionary to them.
Saint John of the Hermits.
Did Episcopalians have saints?
She handed him the iced tea.
He winced after he sipped. “You’re right! That is sweet!”
“Oh—”
“No! My wife thinks I eat too much sugar. This is a treat.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t let the news out.”
“I won’t,” she whispered back. She liked this man, she almost hated to admit, since she would tell him not to come back as he left. “Would you like to sit in here or outside?”
“It’s a beautiful day.” He slid a finger between his collar and his neck and pulled.
“Let’s go out on the front porch then. We’ve got a couple of rockers out there.”
She sat in Claudius’s chair. Father Richards sat in hers and fiddled with the collar again.
“Feel free to take that off. I get it,” she said.
“Thanks.” He pulled the white strip out from around his neck, slid it into his pocket, and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.
“So what did Sister Ruth say?”
“She told me about the incident at Subway.”
—That rat!
“Oh. Yeah, that was pretty weird.”
“I minister over at the prison. I see a lot of weird.” He sipped, then set his glass beside his chair. “You were in Rwanda?”
She held out her arm and rubbed it.
“That’s horrible!”
“Tell me about it. Hang on for a second, I’ll be right back.”
She ran up to her bedroom and pulled an issue of World Conscience magazine off the corner bookshelf. “The Remaining: The Americans Who Stayed in Rwanda, Ten Years Later.”
She hurried back down and held it out. Father Richards looked at it, then handed it back. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Anyway, this writer had been trying to interview me for years. I finally let him. It’s an interesting article, according to Sister Ruth. I haven’t read it. He said the only other American there was never attacked like I was. He didn’t understand what it was like to be at the losing end of a machete, but I still admire him for staying too. He must have been frightened like me, but unlike me, he saved the lives of a lot of people.”
“That must have been difficult.”
She sat back in the rocker. “So, honestly, I thought after telling this guy all about it, I would be over it. I thought I was, until the ‘Subway incident,’ as you put it.”
“People relapse into flashbacks years later. Sometimes years lapse in between.”
“Do you go over to the prison regularly, Father Richards?”
“Yes. And call me John.”
Maybe she should bring up Eli Campbell. But not today. She still wasn’t inclined to visit him. He shot a child. She didn’t care how much PTSD he had from the military. She needed to write him, but lately she just felt angry that he was no better than the men who had tried to kill her.
She and Father John chatted about the farm, her flowers, even how hard it was for her to move on, back into the mainstream of life.
“Not that I blame you. This is like a little piece of heaven right here.”
“It’s true.”
He drained his iced tea, then stood up. “Thanks for your hospitality, May.” He held out the glass.
She took it with a nod. “You’re welcome.”
Following him to his truck, she said, “So that’s it?”
“I find it’s best not to bog people down with a long visit the first time.” He opened his car door, then rested his forearm on the roof. “You going to be okay today?”
“I was okay yesterday.”
“All right. I’ll see you later.”
She held her tongue. It would be rude to tell him not to come back. Still, she wasn’t about to thank him for his visit. He was a nice man, but if he decided he didn’t need another sad-case project, she wouldn’t mind a bit.
When Sister Ruth arrived the next day, May handed her Eli’s
letter.
She read it, then followed May around while she fed the animals. “Well, I gotta say, he still sounds like a straight-up fellow, honey.”
“I guess it won’t hurt to write to him again.”
“No. It’s a way to reach out beyond yourself. At little cost, I might add.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s that camera going?”
“I love it. But I’m up to nine hundred pictures. I’ve deleted some of the bad ones.” She poured chicken feed in the feeder. The ladies flocked around and started pecking away. Golden Comets were such pretty chickens, their feathers a warm red-brown. They weren’t broody either, letting May take their eggs with barely a cluck, and never a peck.
“I’ll pick up a computer for you. You can get them for around three hundred dollars now.”
She hated to admit how bad she wanted one. “Is that a desktop?”
“Yessiree. Laptops are a little bit pricier.”
“How much?”
“Another two hundred or so.”
Four months’ electricity, and winter coming up. “Let’s spring for the laptop. Then I can take it up to my bedroom. I don’t want to have to sit at the same desk all the time.”
“Good thinking, honey.”
May opened a little wooden box that said Coffee in scripted writing and pulled out five hundred dollars. She wanted to cry but felt powerless to stop what she was doing, and she didn’t know why.
Marlow’s June deadline was coming. Maybe she could see this computer as a step toward something else. More like a tentative gesture, if she was honest.
It wasn’t six hours later that Sister Ruth returned from Lexington with a box in her small brown hands.
“It took me a little while because I had to stop at Chick-fil-A for a sandwich. I never go to Lexington without getting a Chick-fil-A.” She pulled out an HP laptop with a lime green cover.
“Wow. It’s actually pretty.”
“Honey, I know! Let’s get this set up.”
Thirty minutes later, May still dreaming about a Chick-fil-A sandwich, Sister Ruth worked the mouse. She’d pulled up a program called Photosmart Essential and got the pictures “downloading” from what she called a USB cable onto the computer. Whatever downloading meant.
When the words Delete from camera? came up, May panicked. “What if something happens to the computer?”