by DiAnn Mills
David could hear the preacher’s voice in the background as he delivered Sunday’s message and his Bible lay open on his lap to the book of Luke, but David’s gaze was glued to a head of gorgeous mahogany hair two pews in front of him. He had never given Grace’s hair much notice before; he remembered her best in braids. Now she styled her hair in becoming waves that reflected the sunlight to its greatest advantage.
When he had left the valley about eighteen months ago, everything about Grace had consumed his thoughts. While living in Detroit, though, he thought he had come to the point that Grace, and marriage in general, were not as important to him. He had found that he had much to offer his job and community, and he still had much to learn about love.
Then why did the slightest tilt of her head catch his attention and the changes of light on her hair fascinate his imagination? Why did he long to understand all that she and her family had been through since their last parting?
David joined the congregation in the closing hymn and prayer and he moved with his parents toward the center aisle. Many people wished to greet him, and they clogged the center aisle as they offered handshakes and kind words.
From David’s side he could see Grace trying to squeeze through the press of bodies. He turned to meet her squarely. “How are you this morning, Gracie?”
“Fine, thanks.” She smiled, but continued to inch down the aisle.
“And where is your mother today? I missed her fine piano playing.”
“She couldn’t leave Father alone and insisted that I come in her place.” Grace sounded tired. “I need to get home right away to help her,” she sighed, unable to move farther down the aisle.
“Come.” David took hold of her elbow and pulled her back toward the front of the church. He was almost surprised that she didn’t resist him.
They slipped through a small door at the right and through the pastor’s study. Few of the parishioners would think of disturbing this private chamber, but David felt like he was on a mission of mercy to see Grace home with speed. Another small door led to the rear of the church where dead briars clawed at the siding in the biting wind.
“Now,” David said, “where did you leave your car?”
“John dropped me off on his way to meet Melissa, his fiancée, for church up the valley.”
“You weren’t planning to walk home in this wind, were you?”
“It really won’t take long. I walked it almost every day when I worked at the store,” Grace flatly stated and started at a fast pace down the alley.
David fell in step beside her, skirting nearly frozen mud puddles. They walked in silence, turning onto Rose Street and leaving the village’s limits. Two carloads of people from church passed by, waving cheerfully.
Then Grace broke the silence between them. “Your parents will wonder where you went,” she stated simply.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “You should have let us drive you home.”
She didn’t respond, but bowed her head to the force of the wind.
“Gracie…” He had many things he would like to ask her, but he didn’t know if she would answer. Instead, he found himself saying, “Do you remember how when we were all kids, you, Guy, John, and I would explore the woods on that hill over there?” He pointed to the right and Grace turned to look.
“Sure, but the ‘castle’ rock with the interesting hiding places is gone—” Her steady voice broke. “They blasted out the side of the hill to get rocks for that dam.” “So many changes we can’t control.”
“Be glad you haven’t been around to witness the worst of it.”
David could hear her bitterness and chose not to speak for several paces. His parents drove slowly up beside them, but he waved them on even as the wind whipped around them. Liberated strands of Grace’s hair danced around her sad, little face.
David chose a new topic. “How has John been? Where is he working?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t see a whole lot of John. He works for Melissa’s father at a county office in Cadiz and spends most of his time with her family. He has very little time for the farm…or helping Mother. He can be so juvenile that you would think he was the youngest.”
David hid the smile generated by her sibling frustrations. He had never had brothers or sisters to relate to. The Rudman children had been his extended family.
“One could say,” David reasoned, “that John has a lot on his mind and is trying to avoid anything stressful or—”
“Then he needs to grow up!” Grace was adamant. “We’ll get through this, but…”
“Yes, you will make it, and I agree that everyone should do his share. Would you like me to talk to John?”
“Sure, if he’ll listen…” She slowly changed her mind. “No, it really doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Call me anytime you need a big brother,” David offered.
Grace didn’t reply and her pace quickened as her driveway neared. She hurried along the rutted lane without looking back.
David stopped, but called, “I promised to stop in later for some of your mother’s pie.”
“Fine” was the only answer the wind carried to him, and he turned to the east to follow the road on across the creek to his home.
“Can you imagine a place that will seat 36,000 people?” Grace overheard David asking Mr. Rudman. There was no response and David continued with enthusiasm, “I went to a Tigers’ baseball game after the additions to the stadium were made and it was fantastic!”
Grace leaned against the wall in the hallway thinking it was nice of David to offer to sit with Mr. Rudman and carry on a one-sided conversation without knowing if anything he said was heard or understood.
David had arrived in time to share a piece of pie with Mrs. Rudman before evening church service. Then he volunteered to sit with Mr. Rudman while Grace and her mother attended church, but Grace felt it was her duty to stay with her father. She straightened the kitchen and found other odd jobs to avoid sitting with the men in the parlor. But when nothing more needed her immediate attention, she found herself drawn to the parlor door by David’s rich voice.
Now David had moved on to Detroit car manufacturing and was explaining the attributes of the V-8 engine to Mr. Rudman. Then he extolled the virtues of the brand-new Zephyr that Lincoln had introduced. David worked at Mr. Ford’s factory where the Zephyr was made. Grace understood very little of the jargon—she was still waiting to learn how to drive an automobile—but she enjoyed David’s enthusiasm and felt herself relaxing.
“The Lord knew what He was doing when He sent me to Michigan. I wouldn’t have believed I could be happy outside the farm. But now my work in Detroit will make it easer to see the farm go,” David quietly said.
Grace came to attention and stood stiff. Lucky you. If I had married you, farming would still be the only thing you knew and you would be faced with losing your livelihood. I did you a favor.
Grace turned to the back stairs and climbed slowly. Why does it seem that God clearly directed you, David—and not me? If marriage wasn’t the right choice for me, neither was going to the big city.
She entered her bedroom and looked around at this haven that would be gone much sooner than she would like to think about. Her window faced up the valley and she could see David’s family farm. Mr. Matthews had already torn down the large barn for lumber, and the house would be moved as soon as possible to a new location on the ridge.
Friends and neighbors were moving on, finding new direction for their lives and starting over. But Grace felt that her life was at a standstill. Her mother refused to make any decision about their farm without Father’s direction. John had dealt with it by mentally removing himself from his family and the farming duties. Grace knew her dressmaking job was her future no matter what happened to the farm, though she didn’t like it.
“Grace!” her mother shrieked.
Grace jumped up from the edge of the bed where she had been resting and raced down the stairs. Her mo
ther met her in the hall, still wearing her coat. Grace could hear her father coughing intensely.
“Help me get your father in bed, now! So much company has given him a setback,” Mrs. Rudman spoke sharply.
David stood over Mr. Rudman rubbing his shoulders and offering soothing words. He met Grace with an apologetic look. Mrs. Rudman refused David’s assistance, and she and Grace shouldered the limp man’s weight between them.
When Grace returned from settling her father in the downstairs bedroom, David hadn’t moved from the parlor. “I’m sorry about that; I didn’t mean to excite him,” David said.
“It’s not your fault,” Grace assured him.
“But Gracie…” David tentatively started, “I think your father was trying to say something before the coughing started. Does he ever speak?”
Grace was surprised. “He usually never makes a sound.”
“He has this cane.” David pointed near the rocking chair. “Does he ever use it?”
“No…but…I think he could. Though he doesn’t seem to have it in him to try.”
“Can I come again tomorrow? I would like to try talking to him again.”
“I don’t think Mother will allow him to be disturbed for a few days. You better not come.”
David moved to the back door. “Gracie, I…”
“Thank you for coming,” she quickly said, not wanting to hear any more apologies—or anything. “We…I mean, I think Father enjoyed your company.”
A pained expression crossed David’s face, but he left without further words.
Chapter 3
David stayed away the next day. Grace’s father spent most of his hours in his bedroom, and Grace’s mother kept her busy creating a magnitude of Christmas delights which included sugar cookies, cherry turnovers, mincemeat pies, braided date bread, and much more
Tuesday morning, Mrs. Rudman put coal in the little stove that heated the hot water pipes and started the fire going. Grace watched as she moved on to lay wood in the old cookstove. Grace’s father had offered to buy a new electric range not long after electricity reached their corner of the world, but Mrs. Rudman remained faithful to her stove even while her kitchen had the conveniences of an electric refrigerator and some small appliances. Today the heat from the stove would feel good as a chill seeped in around the window frames.
Grace got the recipe box from a window shelf and laid out her grandmother’s recipe for Ozark Pudding. She read through the instructions.
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
1½ cup sugar
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups apples, diced
1 cup nuts, chopped
Beat eggs and vanilla, add dry ingredients. Fold in apples and nuts. Spread in greased 8-inch square pan. Bake in a hot oven (375 degrees) for 50 to 60 minutes.
Then she laid out her ingredients. She could mix up the pudding quickly and it could bake while she took a tin of cookies into town for the widowed Mrs. Douglas. Normally Mrs. Rudman would invite older folks like Mrs. Douglas who had no family to join the Rudmans for Christmas dinner, but she had declared there would be no company this year.
Grace was peeling apples when a crash came from the bedroom. She and her mother raced to the room and found Father sitting on the floor with the bedside table upset beside him.
He looked up at them as they entered the room, and Grace saw something in his eyes, an expression that reminded her of the father who had been gone for a long time. But then he lowered his eyes and moaned, long and loud.
Grace noticed that his cane was clutched in his right hand. She said nothing but pointed her mother’s attention to it.
Mrs. Rudman frowned.
They worked together under the strain of lifting Mr. Rudman to the edge of the bed and set to the task of changing him from pajamas to day clothes with little comment about the incident.
Grace was sponging his face clean when a loud popping noise came from the kitchen. She sighed, laid aside her washcloth, and prepared to investigate the noise. Suddenly an explosion rocked the house and filled the bedroom with a gray, acrid smoke.
Mrs. Rudman screamed. Mr. Rudman began making muttering noises. Grace was frozen to her place near the door. She was unsure what could have created the explosion and what she would find outside the room.
There was loud banging on the front door of the house, and finally Grace was able to propel herself into the front parlor. She felt like her body moved in slow motion. The smoke was still thick from the direction of the kitchen and she opened the door.
“Thank God, you are all right! How about your parents?” David rushed past her and toward the smoky kitchen.
Grace was still rooted to the spot.
“The water heater exploded. There’s no fire, but a lot of mess.” David pulled her outside to the porch. He took her shoulders and drew her to him. Grace took a deep breath of the fresh air mixed with his freshly washed hair and allowed David to hold her. “I was just coming up the drive when the kitchen windows blew out and I saw smoke. Where are your parents?”
Grace came alert and pushed away from David’s warm embrace. “They’re in the bedroom,” she said, shaking her head and losing hairpins.
David helped Grace move Mr. Rudman to a chair on the front porch. It was a very cold morning and they wrapped him tightly in several blankets and quilts. Mrs. Rudman, who still seemed to be in shock, sat on the top porch step mopping a continuous flow of tears.
“I’ll inspect the damage,” David announced and headed through the front of the house to the kitchen. This time Grace stayed right on his heels.
The room was swiftly clearing of smoke but everything was black with soot, ashes, and hot coals. Two of the three windows were blown out as well as the glass in the china hutch. The coal water heater lay in a crumbled mass of iron with hot coals spilled around it and steam from broken water pipes clouding it.
“Frozen pipes,” was David’s only comment.
Grace picked her way over the dirt and coals to where she had been preparing her pudding recipe. Her apples were black with soot and a hot coal sat in the middle of her recipe card, charring her grandmother’s script. Red coals were everywhere, smoldering on the floor, table, counter, and almost every other surface.
“We need to pick these up,” Grace said and reached for a spoon and large crock.
David opened the remaining window and the door, then took a snow shovel from the back step and started scooping up coals from the floor.
“Look there, Gracie!” David pointed to the ceiling.
In the ceiling, embedded at least two inches deep, was the door from the water heater’s fuel bin. Grace thought about how her mother and she had been working near the water heater just minutes before it burst.
“Praise God you weren’t in here at the time,” David said.
“Father fell out of bed, and mother and I were dressing him when it exploded,” Grace said with wonder. If only her father could understand what he saved them from.
“It is good that you happened to be coming this way,” Grace commented as she watched David work. She brushed coals from the counter into her crock. “What brought you by?” she casually asked.
David smiled. “I couldn’t stay away.”
Surely not from me!
“I wanted to try talking to your father again. Maybe his mind is not as paralyzed as it has seemed. Certainly he has every right to be depressed and withdrawn…”
Of course, that’s all it is, a good deed toward my father…but if he thinks he can make a difference…
“The water heater,” Mrs. Rudman said from the doorway. “Father always thought to check those kinds of things,” she continued without emotion. “Can we move him into the parlor now?”
“Certainly.” David hurried to the task.
“I think I’ll lie down,” Mrs. Rudman told Grace as she trudged up the stairs. “Oh, and the man from the conser
vancy is headed up the drive. Would you send him away?”
“Uh…yes, Mother.”
Gracie laid her cleaning supplies on the table and looked around at this latest disaster. So much had happened to her family in the last few months, more than any normal family should have to endure. They were all running out of the strength to deal with new crises. When would this testing end?
She met Mr. Richards at the front door and explained the morning’s events, apologizing that neither her father nor mother was available to talk with him.
The man was kind, but he explained, “Miss Rudman, surely your family realizes that the conservancy has made its best offer. We have obtained rights to all the property surrounding this farm—over 2,000 acres total—and the valley will begin to flood as soon as the spring rains come. You can hold out as long as you wish, but it doesn’t change the fact that a large lake will begin to form here in less than a year.” Mr. Richards stepped off the porch and prepared to leave. “Please have a representative from your family come and see me at my office in town at your earliest convenience. We want to make this change as smooth as possible. Good day…and merry Christmas.”
He tipped his black hat to Grace as he got into his car. She watched him leave their property and looked to the west. The dam was a large, ugly mound of dirt. Its very presence was choking the life from her family’s farm. It had already completely concealed any evidence of two other farms.
Then she looked toward the creek. It still looked innocent enough, though its waters had been allowed to pool downstream at the new gatehouse. She remembered many summer days of wading in the cool stream—and many springs when it spilled over is banks. Grace realized that someday people would boat over this land and pull fish from its waters. Would she even recognize where their farm had been?
A tear slipped down her cold cheek, and she turned to go back inside. David met Grace inside the front door.
“He’s right, Gracie. None of us can stop this lake now.” He was leaning against the wall, charming in his soot-covered clothes.