Tell Me About Orchard Hollow

by Lin Stepp

  She had Sam laughing now.

  “Of course, the truth came out then.” She gave him a smug smile. “I’m getting a pretty good collection of Orchard Hollow stories of my own now, aren’t I?”

  “That you are.” He nodded. “That you are.”

  The two talked and laughed together for an hour or so, and then Jenna said her goodbyes and gathered up her things to leave. It had seemed almost like old times tonight with Sam.

  “Next time you come, don’t forget to call and work something out ahead with me and Henry,” Sam reminded her. “Don’t come alone. At least not until Elliott can be convinced to move. Maury and I are working on that. I’ve got a real good case for assault if I want to press it, and the police have been pushing me to do so. They don’t take well to people who knock crippled folks around.” He grinned. “I never thought this little infirmity of mine would come in so handy.”

  She sighed. Despite the jokes, it would be hard for Sam having Elliott across the hall when he came home.

  “You know, Sam, you could move yourself if it bothers you so much to live near Elliott,” she said. “I really don’t like the idea that he could hurt you again.”

  “He’s not likely to do that.” Sam dismissed this idea with a shake of his head. “Besides, I’ve lived here in this apartment a long time now, and I’m not interested in trying to move again. It’s easier for you young ones to move about.”

  Jenna turned to give him a fond look. “I would have liked to stay here at The Carlton near you, Sam, but I can’t afford the rent here on my own. You know that.”

  Sam studied her. “Are you going to be all right where you are with your finances?” he asked. “I have more money than is good for me, you know. You’re welcome to some if you need it.”

  “No, Sam, I’m going to be fine, but thank you. And it means so much to me that you would offer.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek.

  “What would you do if you had a whole lot of money, Jenna? You know, won the power ball or something?”

  She laughed. “Well, now that you’ve sent me down to the mountains and given me a taste for it, I’d probably buy myself a vacation place near Orchard Hollow.”

  “Would you now?” Sam’s eyes lit up. “The old place got to you just like I said it would, didn’t it? Don’t you wish you’d gone before? I was always trying to get you to.”

  “No, I think I went at just the right time.” She smiled to herself. “And maybe if you keep getting better, we’ll go down together soon.”

  He gave her a thumbs up sign. “Well that’s as good a get-well incentive as any man needs - to look forward to a trip to a pretty place with a pretty woman.”

  Jenna hugged him goodbye. “You take care of yourself, Sam,” she said. “I’ll see you again real soon, I’m sure.”

  He gave her a teasing look. “Maybe you’ll tell me what was in that envelope when you come back.”

  She shook her head at him chidingly and closed the door.

  When she got back to her apartment, Jenna sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of tea and studied Boyce’s envelope thoughtfully. She looked at the familiarity of Boyce’s handwriting and studied the postmark, calling up the scenes from the place it came from. When she opened it at last, she found her paycheck in a familiar Hart Gallery envelope. She also found a folded letter, some drawings, and a tiny box with a rubber band around it. Jenna smiled to see a small quartz rock and an arrowhead taped inside a folded piece of bubble wrap and her eyes misted over when she found a pressed flower inside a small plastic sleeve. She remembered finding that flower on one of their hikes.

  She folded out the letter to read. Dear Jenna, it said.

  I know you told me not to call you while you sorted things through in New York on your own, but you didn’t tell me not to write to you. Now don’t ask me not to write again, Jenna, because I really need some way to feel in touch with you. If you have a kind heart for an old friend in Tennessee, you’ll write me back. Patrick is fond of letters, and I’ll let him smell yours so he’ll feel better. I’ll read them to him, too, because he is lonesome for you. He walks all around the rooms of Sam’s cabin with me looking for you in every corner. Almost as bad as me.

  The pressed flower in the plastic is one I saved from the wildflower hike we took at Porter’s Creek. I thought you might like it to stir a memory of a nice day. The arrowhead is one I found up the mountain this week. You always said you liked the one I wore around my neck, so I thought you’d like one of your own to keep. In the Smokies, there is a lot of quartz rock to be found for those who are looking. Somehow this little rock I found looked like a small star and it made me think of you and all the times we sat out on the porch looking for constellations in the night sky and making wishes. Wish on this little star, whenever you can’t see the stars in the city, and always remember what the sky looks like in Orchard Hollow on a clear night.

  Jenna stopped to hunt for a Kleenex. She was already crying like a ninny. She’d expected it. Why did she have to be such an emotional sort of person these days? She had never been particularly prone to crying before in her life. Nor had she gotten weepy over a man before. She sighed. How could she be so homesick for a man or a place she had known such a short time? She read on, sniffling.

  The sketches I enclosed are some I started doodling on sitting up in Sam’s office where you used to work. Don’t laugh at them. You’ll see they are card design ideas. You’ll also see that illustration is not my forte in the art world. However, you were so much on my mind that these are what came out. Creating rhyming verse was beyond my talents, too. You’ll note my little designs just have inspirational scriptures with them instead of verse. I guess, as you would say, that’s the preacher’s son in me. The designs I’ve sent you here are mostly of things we shared, and they made me both happy and sad to put them down. I decided it was only fair that you shared equally with me in these mixed emotions. It would hurt my heart a lot to think I was sitting down here missing you and that you weren’t sitting up there being a little miserable missing me too. I get grumpy suffering alone. Maybe if we send things back and forth to each other, it will help both of us a little. Artists like us have to find a means of expression. So draw and write for me, too. I will watch the mail next week.

  Boyce went on to tell her a few bits of news, and then there was a final paragraph before the letter closed.

  Whoops. Almost forgot. The little box is a special present. I got it in Atlanta for you, but when I got home to give it to you, you had left to go back to New York. I’m not going to give you an explanation for this little gift. I think you’ll figure it out. And when you open it, you’ll know where the other one is.

  From my heart to yours, … Boyce

  In the taped up little box, was a gold half-heart on a long, serpentine chain. The crying started again in earnest then. Jenna remembered clearly the night Boyce had told her how he gave a half heart necklace to a long-ago high school sweetheart. Jenna remarked that she’d always wanted someone to give her one of those. And he remembered her words. Only this heart wasn’t a dime-store one; it was 14K gold. She knew, instinctively, he was wearing the other one - silly or not for a guy. And all to please her. She put the necklace around her neck and held it up tightly against her heart.

  Oh, but she would rather have him here with her instead of just a heart necklace, to feel and hear his own heart beating when she held him close. She sighed deeply, her emotions surfaced.

  She turned to study the phone hanging on the kitchen wall. Should she call? Part of her said yes and part of her said no. Jenna’s heart and emotions cried out to call, but a new, surprisingly stubborn streak in her resisted. She realized that she really wanted to get through this life problem – all of it – on her own. To get strong, to know she could handle things, that she could make it. She wanted to be someone she could like and be proud of, not just someone people needed to feel sorry for. Someone competent, someone independent, someone she would like to know and l
ove. When she met Boyce again, when she talked to him again, she didn’t want to be a pitiful and needy person. She wanted to be a strong person in her own right. She wanted to be an equal.

  She wiped her tears and squared her shoulders with resolution.

  “You can do this, Jenna,” she told herself. “Remember what Boyce used to tell you - that you didn’t know what a fine, capable person you were. Well, let’s find out. Let’s become someone that’s not just someone’s daughter or someone’s wife. Let’s become someone that’s her own person.”

  Her little pep talk helped her in some way. She felt better.

  “I’ll write to him.” She lifted her chin. “We can write each other. And we can come to know each other better that way. The absence will either strengthen our friendship or make us both realize it was just a fleeting thing. Like Boyce’s actress friend, Audrey, that came and went.”

  Jenna went to her desk, took out paper and pen, and began to write. She wrote Boyce about what she had been doing since she got back. She sketched him a casual blueprint of her apartment layout as she talked about it. She drew pictures for him; she wrote snatches of verse. She found some copies of photos she wanted to send him. She thanked him for his gifts. She signed her letter as he did From my heart to yours, and then she packed everything into an envelope and addressed it to go out in tomorrow’s mail.

  She looked through Boyce’s card designs then, realizing she forgot to really study them before. She found herself laughing and hugging them to herself. The little sketches were charming - Boyce’s usual dash-it-off-in-black-ink style. And the scriptures he put with many of his sketches were wonderful ones, thoughts of joy and blessing, words about friendship and nature. Funny, she had never noticed those types of verses in her Bible. She felt a sudden convicting moment then - probably because she spent so little time ever reading her Bible. It was just something she mostly kept on the shelf. A just-in-case sort of book. Now, she found herself a little intrigued about it. Perhaps she’d read it more carefully.

  Jenna once asked Boyce how he read his Bible, whether he had a plan for a few verses a day or a help book to aid him in studying different parts. He had looked at her kind of oddly before he answered.

  “I read it mostly like any other book, Jenna, from beginning to end, from front to back.” He gave her a teasing grin. “It’s a story. Stories work better like that. Start from the first. Read to the finish. Like any book, if it’s really a good story, you read it again and maybe even again. This book is one I’ve read a lot. It’s a good book.” He winked at her at his own little joke at the last.

  She frowned. “Well, of course, it’s good, but isn’t it hard to understand? I mean, the Bible is a complicated book.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Spoken like a true person who has never read it, my daddy would say.” He laughed in remembrance. “Or like a person whose heart isn’t close to God,” he added more seriously. “The Spirit brings the understanding, Jenna. The less of God in you, the harder the reading, Daddy used to say. You’ll have to figure out where the problem is, whether it’s just in not having ever read the Bible or in not being right inside. Either one is easy to fix with a little time and sincere effort.”

  Jenna thought about that now. That was something else she would fix before she saw Boyce again. She wanted to be more of an equal there, too. Before she met and talked with Boyce, she hadn’t realized people could even get close to God like that. But Boyce talked to God. She’d heard him do it even while they were walking up the hiking trail. Once she found him sitting out on the porch - praying with his head in his hands and with all his thoughts focused above.

  She got up and rummaged through her bookshelves for her Bible. She knew it was here somewhere. She found it at last and brought it over to the sofa with her. It was a pretty, maroon leather Bible with gold leaf pages. Guiltily, she realized that most of the pages were still stuck together from where they’d never been turned.

  She’d picked up Boyce’s Bible one day and noticed how worn it was and how much he had marked and scribbled in it.

  He saw her studying it. “My daddy used to say he could tell the depth of a Christian by how used, loved, and marked up their Bible was.”

  “Well, by this Bible, that makes you pretty deep, huh?” she teased.

  He surprised her with a serious answer. “I truly hope so, Jenna. I’m working for that.”

  Thinking back, Jenna recalled the advice she received from Charlotte about praying before she left for New York. Charlotte said to talk to God like a friend. Jenna tried it in the car over the many miles on the way home. It felt odd at first, but then became easier. She felt more calm and peaceful after a while, found her thoughts were clearer. She decided she’d work on that, too. Have some prayer and Bible time every day.

  “I’d like to have a deeper faith,” she acknowledged, thinking out loud. “Too much of my life has simply been a surface sort of thing. I want everything in my life now to be real. I want everything to be sincere and to be my own, to be something genuine and not just what other people tell me and what other people say is right for me. A strong person knows her own way.” She sat up straighter with the words. “Strong people know who they are, what they are, and where they are going. I want to know all of those things. I want to be strong inside, too.” She looked down at the Bible on her lap. “And, I think I’ve figured out where a lot of my answers might be.”

  She opened up her Bible to read, deciding to start like Boyce suggested, right at the beginning. Then she realized she didn’t have a pen or a marker to highlight anything she might want to mark or remember, so she jumped up to find one. While she was up, she got a note pad so she could write out any especially meaningful scriptures she might find as she read. Perhaps she would try working some inspirational verses into some of her card designs. She had never done that before. And Jason wanted her to expand and consider some new card line ideas. This might work well.

  Jenna looked around her apartment with a small smile. She was on her way. And as Sam said, everything was going to be all right. She had to believe that. And she hoped, with all of her being, that it was true.

  Chapter 20

  On a warm evening in late June, Boyce Hart sat out on the screened porch at Charlotte and Dean’s house. After a nice dinner and evening with his friends, he relaxed now, with his feet propped up on the porch rail, while Charlotte and Dean put the children to bed.

  The summer evening spread quietly around him like a dark quilt. Boyce watched the night fireflies, listened to the June bugs, and thought about Jenna.

  Would there ever be a time when he wouldn’t think about Jenna at odd times throughout every day? Or a time when she wouldn’t wander in and out of his mind at will?

  “It’s been two months now,” he said softly to Patrick, who lay curled up at his feet. “And I haven’t seen her or talked to her since she left in April.” He sighed heavily. “But at least she writes to me. That’s something.”

  The dog thumped his tail in reply, glad to have come with Boyce tonight.

  “Yeah, she stays in touch, and sends us pictures, keepsakes, and rough drawings of the greeting card designs she’s working on.” Boyce scratched the dog’s head absently.

  “I know she still thinks about the mountains because of the familiar scenes in the new Country Roads Series she’s been working on.” He paused, listening to a screech owl in the woods nearby. “I can tell from her letters, too, that she’s been growing spiritually. She’s put that aspect of herself into her Hope Series – the inspirational line she’s started. Jenna said creating those cards had done a lot to keep her cheerful in a hard time. She also said I’d helped inspire the Hope Series with those cards I’d sent in my first letter.”

  He smiled, remembering that. There was little comparison between those old, rough ink sketches he sent Jenna in late April and the soft, dreamy watercolor cards she sent to him. The detail of her work always impressed him. She still continued the pattern, too,
of hiding little surprises in her designs you only noticed after studying them for a while – a shadowy fish just below the surface of a pond, an inchworm on the stem of a flower, a kitten’s head peeping out of a pile of birthday bags.

  “It takes patience and a special gift to do such small and intricate work.” Boyce shook his head. “It’s certainly not my gifting. I like to work big, to spread paint on lavishly.” Many times he left the details of a face or a flower blurred and incomplete, trusting them to the imagination of the viewer.

  Patrick pricked his ears, hearing the owl again.

  Boyce calmed him and then listened for Dean and Charlotte. He could still hear their soft voices settling the children through the open window.

  He picked up a twig off the porch, turning it in his hand. “Jenna says I help her with her work, but she helps me with mine, too. I’ve gotten to where I send her my sketch ideas and she sends back her comments. Sometimes I incorporate them, Patrick, sometimes I don’t. But it’s interesting to get an outside view.”

  Boyce enjoyed the ongoing critiques they mailed back and forth. People who didn’t do art always tended to think everything he did looked wonderful, so it provided little help to get their opinions. It pleased Boyce that Jenna no longer feared giving Boyce her own views – or flinched at receiving his. He thought this a great sign of increasing confidence and growth on her part.

  “I like the road bending back into the woods in your new sketch,” she wrote him last week. “But I find myself wanting to glimpse something at the end of the road, something to look forward to.”

  Sometimes rather than just making suggestions, she would also get tough. The week before she wrote, “That scene you drew of all the children playing in the stream was really sexist. All the boys were active - swimming, tubing, running on the bank, jumping in the water - and all the girls were passive, lying in the sun, watching the boys, wading only in the edges of the water. Carla and I would have been jumping off the rocks with the boys into the pond when we were that age. You need to be more sensitive about stereotypes.”