© 2004 by Patricia Hickman.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Faith
Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
First eBook Edition: June 2004
ISBN: 978-0-446-51023-3
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF PATRICIA HICKMAN
NAZARETH’S SONG
“Hickman’s deft touch in this poignant tale of selfless denial and truth will squeeze the hearts of those who read NAZARETH’S SONG and coax them on a journey to the very essence of serving God. Her writing sings.”
—LOIS RICHER, AUTHOR OF DANGEROUS SANCTUARY
“Patricia Hickman has created a very special town filled with characters we love spending time with. This story beautifully illustrates the challenges and rewards of unselfishness, forgiveness, and loyalty. . . . I couldn’t put the book down until I found out which side won.”
—JANELLE SCHNEIDER, AUTHOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
“NAZARETH’S SONG is rich with characters living real in hard times. Jeb Nubey seeks God by trial and error like most of us. Fresh and triumphant.”
—LYN COTE, AUTHOR OF WINTER’S SECRET
“Written in Hickman’s unique and captivating style, NAZARETH’S SONG offers a wise portrait of a man who learns that doing right comes at a cost. Full of insight and compassion . . . a rich, satisfying read.”
— GAYLE ROPER, AUTHOR OF WINTER WINDS, AUTUMN DREAMS
“Hickman, a writer with a flair for exacting and lyrical, but never cumbersome, description, delivers fresh-picked words again and again. I love the way she writes! You will too.”
— LISA SAMSON, AUTHOR OF THE CHURCH LADIES AND THE LIVING END
FALLEN ANGELS
“A humorous and poignant parable of how man plans and God prevails. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
—FRANCINE RIVERS, AUTHOR OF ATONEMENT CHILD
“I was instantly charmed! No writer can transport a reader to the South quite like Patricia Hickman. Touching, funny, and filled with love, Fallen Angels will be one of the best books you’ll read all year.”
— ROBIN LEE HATCHER, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF FIRSTBORN
“Hickman’s prose rings with gritty authenticity and stark, lyrical description.”
—LIZ CURTIS HIGGS, AUTHOR OF THORN IN MY HEART
“A new book by Patricia Hickman is always an occasion for delight. She is a gifted author with a deft touch at all the elements of fine storytelling.”
—T. DAVIS BUNN, AUTHOR OF WINNER TAKE ALL
“Hickman kicks off her new series with this gentle, enjoyable yarn about four misfits cast adrift in Arkansas during the Great Depression. . . . [She] tells her story with warmth, humor, and some lovely descriptions. . . . The ending . . . is sweetly satisfying. Hickman is a talented writer, and readers will likely sympathize with her unlikely ragtag group of characters.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“I love Patty Hickman’s vivid language and rich descriptions. Her characters pop off the page and, in this latest novel, steal your heart.”
— LISA TAWN BERGREN, AUTHOR OF WINDCHILL SUMMER
“In a carefully and beautifully written story of home and family, Hickman reminds us that even when we hide, love finds a way.”
—LYNN HINTON, AUTHOR OF FRIENDSHIP CAKE
“A haunting tale of innocence, greed, and spiritual awakening.”
— RANDALL INGERMANSON, CHRISTY AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF OXYGEN AND THE FIFTH MAN
“Only Patricia Hickman could move from humorous simplicity to poignant epiphany on the very same page. Fallen Angels will charm its way right into your heart.”
— BRANDILYN COLLIN, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF DREAD CHAMPION AND CAPTURE THE WIND FOR ME
“A heartwarming read, both humorous and achingly real. A beautiful testimony to the truth of the human condition and the parts we play. Her characters are artfully unmasked to reveal ourselves.”
— KRISTEN HEITZMANN, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF TWILIGHT AND THE DIAMOND OF THE ROCKIES SERIES
“Both touching and funny to read. . . . I am looking forward to the next book.”
—FAYE DASEN, THE PILOT
“This is an entertaining historical fiction. . . . The characters hook readers with their plight.”
—HARRIET KLAUSNER BOOK REVIEWS
“Fallen Angels is a wonderful and heartwarming look into a sad time in our nation’s history. . . . Flawless characterization and dialogue in the midst of a gripping story make the pages turn quickly to the end. . . . Hickman has written a charming and humorous story that brings a smile to the heart. . . . Not to be missed.”
—ROMREVTODAY.COM
“A solid seven.”
—ROBERTA PAGE, LEBANON DAILY RECORD
“Inspired and inspiring, Fallen Angels is a kaleidoscope of emotional hues—especially the emotions of laughter and joy. Can a story of the Great Depression lift your spirits? Can a con man teach you truths about life? Read this novel. It will make a believer out of you.”
— JIM DENNEY, AUTHOR OF ANSWERS TO SATISFY THE SOUL AND THE TIMEBENDERS SERIES
“Patty’s innate ability to dish up a captivating tale with authentic Southern flavor is truly impressive! . . . This charming story is truly unforgettable.”
— MELODY CARLSON, AUTHOR OF ARMANDO’S TREASURE, LOOKING FOR CASSANDRA JANE, BLOOD SISTERS, AND FINDING ALICE
To Lou Davis, a dear aunt who loves God through loving others
I wish to thank April Goff of the Arkansas Historical Archives for her tenacity in helping me locate all those difficult-to-find facts, books, and maps of Arkansas during the Great Depression years. Also a warm thanks to Howard Hattabaugh for his extensive knowledge of history of the lumber industry in Arkansas. Much heartfelt appreciation to the tour guides of the Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center and the Fordyce Bath House for sharing their amazing history. And thanks to them as well for the historic Hot Springs maps. Thank you also to the Warner team for their commitment to the Millwood Hollow series. And again, thank you to my wonderful father and mother-in-law, Ken and Gaye Hickman, for allowing me to pick their brains regarding Arky-isms and the customs and traditions of the ordinary folk of 1930s Arkansas.
1
Millwood Hollow cast the kind of dreamy mood that drew women into its center, the way morning trickled through the pale green mist of dawn and the trout stream meandered in an elegant train around two hundred tree trunks. The quiet veil of virgin light belonged to Millwood Hollow, just as the noise of rattling Model-As and newspaper boys shouting into the dry September air belonged to Hot Springs. The leaves hung soft and green on the thick limbs, each overlapping another, strung from the sky to the earth like happy fabric squares cut and
laid out for a winter quilt.
Such a place might rekindle schoolteacher Fern Coulter’s interest in him, Jeb Nubey thought, although he did not know for certain. Fern could not be figured out in an instant. Jeb knelt on one knee and practiced a speech, careful to bar any idle flattery. Fern’s intellect would not buy into sentimental sweet talk, and if he so much as hinted at manipulation he would lose her altogether.
He remembered the afternoon she had dumped him. On the hottest August day that swept dust and shimmering ghosts of heat through town like a mean spirit, Fern had confessed, “Jeb, it’s a crying shame, you know, the way I fell in love with an ideal and not a man. I blame myself, not you.”
“I’ll be making preacher soon, Fern, if that’s your worry.” He had realized too late he might come across a mite anxious.
“Something good will come of all this,” she had said. “You’ll move on, make something of yourself. I am proud of you, so don’t get the wrong idea.”
“Gracie says I’ll be getting a certificate from this school in Texas he hooked me up with.” Jeb had stopped short of saying he would have it framed. He could feel his legitimacy spilling out of him like he had sprung a leak there in plain sight of Fern. Looking back, he should have walked away right then with what little dignity remained.
“The last thing you need is someone loving you for what you’re trying to become.” She had worn a pair of jointed earrings that kept tapping the sides of her face like the forelegs of a praying mantis. “You deserve better.” She picked up a sack of something she had bought that morning at the Woolworth’s, then climbed into her rattling Chevy coupe and tooled off to start the next hour of her life without him.
Jeb had tried to tell Fern how he reached for her same ideals with the muster of a fighter pilot. But he was left watching her drive away as he fumbled for words that would not come.
Fool that you are, he had thought to himself.
Fern’s blunt here’s-the-deal, take-it-or-leave-it way of letting Jeb down had left him grasping for another chance, although his oldest charge, Angel, had judged him duly demeaned.
Now, in the secret chapel of daylight, he balanced on one knee until it came to him that his posture suggested matrimony. If Fern so much as laid eyes on him in such a position, she would turn and walk away before he had the chance to explain his lesser intent of starting over with courtship. So he found a place to sit on a fallen tree and spent several minutes piecing together a speech that might convince Fern to give thought to the idea of seeing him again—over coffee at Beulah’s. No. Dinner. Dinner would be better, since their first go-around had taken them past the stage of coffee and a biscuit.
How well he remembered the night she had come nigh to giving herself to him. That alone had much to do with Fern’s gradual pulling away from him, along with the fact she had said she loved him—before the truth came out, that is. That Jeb was not who he said he was.
Jeb slumped down, exhausted by his thoughts. His year under the tutelage of Philemon Gracie had taught him how to bring out the message inside the Scriptures, picking away at every word until the application rose from the story like a bubble below the lake’s surface. Gracie had taught him porch chatter—how to yammer on about everything from the best place to buy buckshot to how to feed six children on three dollars a week. But Philemon, not a minister to dabble in matters as impractical as romance, had not mentioned how Jeb could win back the affections of the schoolteacher who hated him for pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Even knowing he was working to become a legitimate preacher had not improved her trust in Jeb. The history they shared smacked of too much bitter and not enough sweet.
Returning to his orations, Jeb practiced a few well-turned phrases, got up, sat back down, then threw open his arms and said to the trees, “Fern, I’m not the same man you once knew. I’ve learned the difference between what is right and wrong. I want to ask you to forgive me and . . .”
His voice weakened at the sight of Angel, his fourteen-year-old charge, staring at him from across the rear of the acre behind the church. Her gaze held a pitiable anticipation, as though she expected every last ounce of his manhood to wither up and blow away. She shrugged and called over to him, “I liked you better as a liar. At least you was believable then.”
Jeb stopped his truck when he saw the face of the boy, aged by hard times, selling homemade items alongside the road. Everyone in Nazareth had fallen on hard times. But nobody wanted a handout, no matter what the rest of the country thought. Buying homemade wares from a neighbor lacked the sting of blatant charity. Edward Bluetooth’s family was known for making and selling goods along the stretch of road right outside downtown Nazareth, as well as for being good fix-it people for the county’s farmers.
Jeb was supposed to be on his way into town on an errand; Gracie had sent him to pick up a sack of nails and some wood to repair a window in the church. He hit the brake and pulled the truck to a stop next to the boy’s stand.
Edward Bluetooth attended the county school often enough to fall behind and yet get a free lunch and be counted in the rolls. He’d never had the look of a boy, just a small twelve-year-old man with a Fuller Brush salesman’s spiel and yellow teeth. He sold his family’s wares on the side of the road—mostly leather things and squares of lye soap cooked up with lavender to hide the unpleasant stench when his momma stirred up potent batches out in the front yard.
Jeb picked up a pair of moccasins stitched around the toes, with leather straps and tassels that tickled the calf. Edward had a hungry look about him that pinched Jeb’s conscience. He’d heard the Bluetooths had left the Appalachians on foot and hiked all the way to Arkansas to try to find a place where they could set up shop and escape the starvation of the hills. But the Depression had put every person—Indian, Negro, and White—in the same boat.
Before Jeb could lay down the shoes, Edward said to him, “Those are real good moccasins.”
“I’ll give you fifty cents, Edward,” said Jeb.
“You don’t believe me. Try ’em for a month. If they don’t work fer ye, you bring ’em back. I’ll give you back your dollar.”
“Too much.”
“Seventy-five cents. Bottom dollar, Preacher.”
Jeb handed Edward all the change from his pocket.
“You still owe me a dime, Preacher, but if you’ll not mention it to anyone, I’ll let you slide. You is lucky. The moccasins wear just as good at sixty-five cent as a dollar.”
Jeb pulled his foot out of his right shoe and tried on a moccasin. “Feels good, Edward. You make them?”
“Nobody in the Bluetooth family has my way with leather. Best hands in the county—fingers touched by God, my uncle says. Wait to see how they do for you, then you’ll be runnin’ back for more.”
Jeb smiled at the boy’s pitch and climbed into the cab of his truck. As he drove off, he glanced back at Edward. The boy had already pulled up shop and was walking down the road with his entire business in a time-punctured satchel straining with his shoemaker’s knickknacks. Leather straps dangled out the bottom. He was whistling a song that sounded like a Christmas carol in the middle of September.
Jeb drove on to the parsonage wearing Edward Bluetooth’s moccasins. When he pulled up, Reverend Gracie, the minister of Church in the Dell and his mentor and teacher, waited on the front porch. The instant Jeb pulled into the dusty circle of roadway that led to the house, Gracie pulled out his pocket watch to check the time. He lifted himself out of the rocker and waited for Jeb to come up and seat himself. Once settled, the parson chatted about the county fair for a moment, more talkative than usual. Then he spotted some pages sticking out from under the jacket Jeb had laid over the top of his work. Little if anything ever got past Gracie’s eye for detail.
“Good. You brought your notes. I can’t find my glasses. You’ll have to read a bit of your thesis to me. Eyes are getting old,” said Gracie.
“I don’t have your flair with words,” Jeb admitted. Gracie had loaned him
his old papers from the little Bible school he had attended up north. The preacher’s writing had a quick pace about it—like a general, all hurry-up-and-let’s-get-on-with-things. Jeb’s thesis felt like lead in his hands. He had inked out and written over so many of the words, the paper looked blotchy, as though penned by Angel’s little brother, Willie. He hesitated. “Maybe I should rewrite it.”
“First-thesis jitters. I had them too. May as well get over it. Let’s see it.” Philemon had lucid eyes that changed from green to blue depending upon his mood. They were eyes that could see straight into Jeb with candor, probing all the way past his insecurities and straight into his fears.
Jeb laughed. He had come to know a different Gracie from the black-coated penguin who had waddled into Church in the Dell with his three astute city children. Only with Jeb around did Gracie fall into jesting.
Jeb read a line or two, cleared his throat, and then began again. He’d gone through a couple of paragraphs before he realized Gracie was staring into the dusty road beyond the parsonage. “I’m boring you. If it’s lousy, just give it to me slowly.”
Gracie pulled a blanket around his shoulders, allowing the corners to hang like an old lady’s prayer shawl. After a pause to gauge Jeb’s mood, he spoke candidly. “I’m afraid I’m not well, Jeb.”
At twilight each evening, the slow final drain of summer into September sent everyone in town out onto their front porches. Even from a mile up the road, just before Marvelous Crossing Bridge, Jeb could hear the neighbor girls’ carefree laughter, filled with the joys of coming of age and the mystery of boys and not the least bit dampened by the Depression.
“You been to see the doctor yet?” Jeb laid aside the thesis between them on the porch, his rocker slowing to the same steady, lulling creak of Gracie’s import from Germany.
“Down around these places, it’s difficult to get good care. Dr. Forrester in Hot Springs says I’ve gone and got myself a nasty stomach disorder.”
“You thought about seeing Ethel Bluetooth? She’s the best yarb woman, you know, and lots of things can be done for a stomach complaint,” said Jeb, unconsciously examining his new moccasins.
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