Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  Undoubtedly, Ursula had never in her life had to trust the Lord for money. When a body goes through life living on the allowance their daddy gives them, they don’t have to depend on the Lord to provide. They miss a lot. In my book, they miss one of the best ways of getting to know God. Wouldn’t it be something if I could help her get her daddy off her back.

  I looked at the avalanche and could see Dora in the lead almost at the top. Wilma wasn’t far behind. The rest of them were here and there, holding on to each other, scrambling to find a foothold or trying to decide if they could jump from one rock to the next. Evelyn looked like she was holding her own with the rest. I didn’t see Lenora.

  I turned to look back at the pool below. There was a fisherman down there making his way upstream, casting for trout. He was decked out in waders and all the paraphernalia city men buy to go fishing. There’s no telling how much money they spend just to catch one or two fish that they could buy in the fish market for two or three dollars. Wading in that cold water over slippery rocks is not my idea of a good time.

  I kept watching him casting, hoping he’d make a strike, and he did. Reeling in the fish, he seemed to be an expert at netting it. I watched him take out the hook, and as he dropped the fish in that wicker box strapped on his side, he looked up and saw me. He tipped his hat in a friendly kind of way, and in a not-too-friendly way I acknowledged him with a nod. After all, you can’t be too careful with people you don’t know.

  As he was making his way upstream toward me, he cast a couple times more and came close enough that I could see he was an older fellow, probably retired. For sure, old enough for Social Security. That hat was decorated with all kinds of hooks and flies, probably a fortune in lures. He wore glasses and had a neat, trimmed mustache. You don’t see men smile the way that man was smiling. I guess it was catching the fish made him smile.

  The boulders up behind me would make it impossible for him to fish any farther than my rock, and I wanted to see him catch at least one more before he had to stop. He handled that rod with a wrist motion that cast the line out over the pond, which was not an easy thing to do. I had to laugh; I caught myself praying he’d catch one! Well, sure enough, he angled that line just right for a trout swimming along looking for a bite. Once it took the bait and darted this way and that, the fellow started reeling him in. To see that rainbow trout splashing out of the water, flashing in the sun, fighting against the hook, was something right out of a wildlife magazine. Even after the man scooped it up in the net, that little bugger still fought, flipping and flopping.

  The fisherman took his time removing the hook and getting the catch in his box. Then he set out again. The water was getting deeper, nearly up to his waist. Casting one more time, he didn’t get a taker, so he reeled in his line and made his way toward the bank. I thought he would take the footpath back the way we came, but instead he was making his way along the trail beside the creek, coming my way. Ducking under limbs and climbing over rocks, he finally came out at the place where I had come onto the rock.

  “Good afternoon,” he said in a gentlemanly kind of way. “It’s a fine day for fishing.”

  “So I see,” I said without sounding too interested. “May I join you?” he asked.

  “Well, I guess you can. This rock don’t belong to me.” He smiled and, holding on to a limb, swung down from the bank to my rock.

  Now, I wasn’t in the habit of striking up conversations with strange men, but there was just something about this man that would tell anybody he was a gentleman. Of course, Jack the Ripper was probably a gentleman when he wasn’t killing women.

  The fisherman told me his name, Albert Ringstaff, which sounded German to me, and I have not got much use for Germans.

  Once on the rock, he stood there with water from his waders trickling down in little rivulets. Gazing out over the pond, we saw a fish plop up. “Hmm, I should’ve waited for that one,” he remarked. “May I sit down?”

  “Like I said, this rock don’t belong to me.”

  He smiled, laid his rod on the rock, and settled himself down a few feet from me. Then, out of the blue, he said, “I heard you singing.”

  I thought I would die on the spot!

  He turned around to look up the mountain. “Do you know those ladies climbing the rocks?”

  I told him I did and that we were from Priscilla Home. But I could hardly look his way I was so mortified he had heard me singing. He told me he lived up on the mountain and knew Dr. Elsie. Said he knew about Priscilla Home, although he had never been there. The way he talked, he had a slight accent, and that made me pretty sure he was German.

  “Can you use some fish?” he asked.

  “Well, maybe.” I didn’t want to appear too anxious.

  When he asked me how many ladies were in residence, I told him that with the director and me there were fourteen.

  He lifted the lid of his fish box and looked inside. “I was very fortunate today. The wildlife service has just stocked the stream—put tons of fish in the water—so I caught a number of speckled and rainbow trout. If you can use them there might be enough to make you a meal.”

  “Oh, you keep them for yourself.”

  “No, I’m not much of a cook. I usually catch and release, but if I see I’m going to catch enough, I save them and give them to the neighbors.”

  I wanted those fish in the worst way. “Well, if you insist,” I said. “Thank you. We’ll clean them and have a fish fry tomorrow night.”

  Seeing I didn’t have a bucket or anything to put the fish in, he said, “I’ll take them up to the house for you.”

  We could hear someone thrashing through the bushes coming back down the trail. It was Lenora. She was muddy from slipping and sliding on the trail, and her face was scratched. Stopping to catch her breath, she held on to the limb above my rock and steadied herself. “I couldn’t make it up those rocks,” she explained.

  I didn’t know whether or not to introduce her to Mr. Ringstaff, but since he was giving us the fish, I decided I should. “This is Miss Lenora Barrineau, one of our residents,” I told him.

  The man’s mouth fell open. He was so shocked he repeated her name. “Lenora Barrineau? Do you mean the Lenora Barrineau?” He stood up, holding out his hand to her.

  What’s this? Lenora looked like a scared rabbit!

  “Miss Barrineau, do you remember me?”

  Embarrassed, Lenora turned her face the other way, and for a minute I thought she was going to break and run.

  Mr. Ringstaff grabbed her hand. “You are Lenora Barrineau, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you remember me?”

  “Of course, I do, Mr. Ringstaff,” she said, still hanging on to that limb, trapped with no way to escape.

  Thunderstruck as he was, Ringstaff didn’t let go of her and was so excited I was afraid he was going to fall off that rock and take her with him. “Miss Barrineau—I can’t believe it’s really you!”

  A nervous little smile showed on her face and then vanished.

  I knew she was embarrassed looking the way she did, muddy from head to foot. With neither hand free, she brushed her head against her shoulder trying to wipe her face. “Please pardon my appearance,” she stammered. “The trail proved to be too much for me. If you will excuse me, I need to get back to the house and clean up.”

  “Oh, please,” he begged. “Please, come sit with us a few minutes.”

  As much as she didn’t want to let go that branch, the way he begged left her little choice. He carefully helped her onto the rock, and I moved over to make room for her to sit down between us.

  Ringstaff couldn’t take his eyes off her. “How long has it been?” he asked. “When was the last time I saw you—Moscow? Milan?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said softly and drew her knees up under her chin.

  “Oh, I think it was Milan—must have been fifteen years, well, almost fifteen years ago.”

  Lenora smiled slightly and lace
d her fingers together, holding on to her knees.

  I felt like a fifth wheel. This gentleman was someone from her past, and maybe what they had to say to each other was none of my business. To tell the truth, curiosity was about to kill this cat, but I made an excuse and started to get up. “I need to see about the ladies,” I told them. The man jumped up and helped me get off the rock onto the bank. Like I said, he had been brought up right.

  All I did was climb far enough to be out of sight and earshot. As I sat waiting for the girls to come down, I couldn’t get over the way Mr. Ringstaff seemed to spark something in Lenora. It might be good for her if I asked him to stay for supper, I thought. All we had were beans, but we had plenty, and I was going to make the cornbread. Well, we’ll see.

  8

  Mr. Ringstaff couldn’t come for supper because that evening he was driving to Greensboro, where he would spend the night and take an early flight to New York the next day. After Lenora had gone upstairs, he stayed a few minutes on the porch, and I gave him a rain check for the supper he was missing. “I’ll be back next week,” he told me, “and I’ll be in touch.”

  Of course, I was dying to know who this man was and what business he had in New York. There was no doubt Lenora knew all about him, so the temptation to ask her was strong, but I didn’t. As frail as she was, asking her anything personal might send her further back into her shell and spoil what chances we might have to help her. When I’d set my mind to find out a mystery such as this one, I was pretty good at it. I thought, The next time I talk to Dr. Elsie, I’ll ask her about Ringstaff. He’s her neighbor; she’ll know.

  Ursula looked better after resting a while, and she seemed encouraged that someone else had called about the piano. “I told him it’s in poor condition,” she said, “but he didn’t seem to be put off by the price. He’s coming tomorrow to look at it.”

  I had made rice pudding to go with our meal and planned to take some to Lester the next day when we returned the horse and plow. The garden needed a lot more grubbing before we could plant, and we were already past planting time. Of course, we had no seed or anything else. Maybe there is not to be a garden, after all, I worried. If the Lord don’t send in the money to pay these bills, we’ll have no need for a garden. We’ll be closed down.

  I couldn’t bear to think about that happening, but I had to admit, we weren’t offering much in the way of spiritual help for these women. On that account the Lord might be finished with Priscilla Home. I felt guilty that I hadn’t done my part. I’d been so busy about the garden and everything I hadn’t put first things first. There was one thing I knew I could do, and I promised myself I’d get cracking on that the next day.

  Saturday morning we had our first Praise and Prayer session. Each of the women had been issued a new translation of the Bible, one easier for them to understand than the King James, and we were sitting around in the day room ready to get started.

  I hardly knew how to begin. “Well,” I said, “what do we have to be thankful for?”

  There was dead silence.

  I was about to say something myself when Dora volunteered. Can you imagine—Dora!

  “He has give me ever’thang a body ever needed,” she was saying. “The sun to warm my back, the moon and stars spread over me of a night, good water to drink, good air to breathe, a mill on the branch to grind my corn, a cookstove and bed pots. I got no quarrel with God. He’s been good to me.”

  She didn’t mean to be funny and, to my surprise, nobody thought it was. Nobody laughed or even smiled. I guess we were all kind of taken back by what she said and the way she said it.

  The effect had not worn off when I cleared my throat and suggested we open our Bibles to the Psalms. There’s real soul food in the Psalms. “Let’s pick verses to praise the Lord with,” I told them. “Mr. Splurgeon says, ‘We ought not to leap in prayer and limp in praise.’”

  That pearl of wisdom went right over their heads. They were too busy turning back and forth trying to find the Psalms. “The Psalms is smack dab in the middle of your Bible,” I told them.

  “I found it—the Palms!” Wilma exclaimed.

  I hesitated but decided it wouldn’t do not to correct her. “It’s Psalms, Wilma, not Palms, okay?”

  “Sure looks like Palms,” she said and laughed.

  To get the thing going, I picked the first verse of Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.”

  Angela, curled up in the corner of the sofa, added, “And forget not all his benefits.”

  Good, I thought. At least somebody understands what we’re trying to do here. But then there was a long silence. I didn’t know what to do. They were turning pages, looking for something to read, so I waited and prayed somebody would come up with a verse.

  Wilma, the truck driver, started reading a long psalm with every verse ending in “his mercy endureth forever.” By the time she had read half a page, she stopped. “That ain’t what you want, is it?”

  “It’s all good, Wilma. Go right ahead.”

  And she did.

  Melba, one of the best cooks in the house and a hairdresser like Brenda, found the psalm she was looking for and waited for Wilma to finish before telling us, “I can say this one by heart. I learned it in Vacation Bible School when I was eight years old.” She recited the Twenty-third Psalm without a hitch.

  “That’s the one they used at my daddy’s funeral,” Nancy said. “He died the day I graduated from nursing school.” She read a praise verse, then explained, “Emily left her glasses so I’ll read another one for her.” Emily, the slender redhead sitting beside her, was Nancy’s roommate. They all said she was a professional ice skater, so I reckoned that was true.

  I felt really good that the women seemed to be liking what we were doing. They kept pawing the pages until I reckoned maybe half of them had read a verse or two.

  “Miss E.,” Angela asked, “could we sing a chorus or something?”

  “Sure,” I said. She and Nancy put their heads together and came up with a chorus about being a sanctuary for the Lord. Angela led off with a voice like an angel’s. I tell you, she sang as good as any of those big-time singers traveling all over the country making big bucks. Why, it wasn’t no time till she and Nancy had us all singing that chorus, only you can bet your bottom dollar I didn’t let loose full force; I just hummed along. The words were so pretty and the girls sang so sweet it would have made the angels clap their hands, except as how probably none of the women could honestly claim to be a sanctuary for the Lord. It’s like Splurgeon says, “Fools can sing, but only those who are taught of God can be holy.”

  During the singing, Portia left the room to go to the bathroom, and her roommate, Linda, jumped at the chance to tell us about her. “Portia calls herself Satan’s child, so don’t look for her to sing Christian songs.”

  No one laughed, and I for one had to bite my tongue not to jerk a knot in that blabbermouth.

  Portia didn’t come back until we were giving our requests for prayer. We prayed for the women’s children, their husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and their parents, but oddly enough, no one asked for victory over their own addiction.

  As Dora and I left the house to get the plow and horse ready to make the trip back to Lester’s, Linda followed me. “Miss E., can I go with you?”

  “No, you need to stay here and work in the garden.”

  “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Can’t you tell me right now?” I motioned to her to lift the other end of the plow to help me put it in the trunk.

  “No, I can’t tell you right now. It’s a long story, something important you should know. I can tell you in the car.”

  She just wants to fill me in on more gossip, I figured. “Well, if it’s something about another resident here, we’ll go to that person and you can tell it to them as well as to me.”

  Linda laughed. “That would take all the fun out of it.” Then she blurted out, “Tha
t tattoo Portia has covers the entire front of her body—you oughta’ see it! It’s a rose bush with buds where you might expect—”

  “Linda, I don’t want to hear this!”

  “You don’t want to hear that she left home when she was fourteen because of her stepfather—how he messed with her?”

  “No! I do not want to hear another word of this!” I was getting madder by the minute and walked fast toward the garage, trying to shake her. She kept right on my heels. “Linda, we’re not here to dwell on the past. We’re here to think about the future we can have if we let the Lord into our lives.”

  That garage was full of junk. I was looking to see if there was a gasoline can in there. We needed gas for the van.

  Linda would not shut up. “Portia’s mother is a Christian, and every time Portia calls her, her mother sends her a bus ticket or a plane ticket to come home. Of course, Portia never goes home; she just cashes the ticket and spends the money. She could go home now if she wanted to. Her stepfather left her mother some time ago, so she’s got no excuse not to go home.”

  “Linda, that is none of your business nor mine!” I found the gas can, but it was empty.

  She laughed and followed me back to the car. I tell you, there was evil in that girl! I knew I shouldn’t let her bug me; after all, she wouldn’t be at Priscilla Home if she was a saint. Like Splurgeon says, “It takes holy hearts to make holy tongues” and Linda was a long way from having a holy heart.

  But I couldn’t shut her up!

  “One reason Portia got that tattoo is to keep Christians away from her. No self-respecting Christian will have anything to do with somebody has got tattoos like that.”

  “Then why did she come here to this Christian place?” I asked and opened the car door.

  “The only reason she came here was to have a warm place to spend the winter.” Linda was holding on to the door to keep me from closing it.