Nazareth's Song

by Patricia Hickman

  “Always need help. We got a load of blankets in, so figuring it’s getting cold nights, we’d best get some shelves up for blankets.” He thanked Jeb for the offer. “Not too many preachers give me that kind of help.”

  They walked to the store and found Val counting tenpenny nails on an upturned crate. Will added a scuttle full of coal to the potbellied stove while Jeb carried in the new lumber for the job.

  Once they started, they quickly fell into a system. Jeb and Val held the brackets while Will hammered.

  “Freda stay home today, Will?” asked Val.

  Will drove another nail into the wall.

  Jeb saw Freda’s receipt pad still tucked into the slot next to the pens and pencils. The store smelled of produce and feed sacks. But absent was the lingering violet of Freda’s toilet water.

  Mellie Fogarty stepped into the store with her shopping list. “I heard you had a sale on canned chili, Will? Best to stock up before winter gets here.” She stood in the middle of the aisle and looked around. “Freda here today?”

  Will sneezed. “Home cleaning out closets.”

  “In the fall? What did you do this time, Will?” She wandered up another aisle and then yelled, “I don’t see the chili. You think you could call Freda and ask her where she put the display?”

  “Excuse me, fellers,” said Will. He laid aside the hammer and hobbled up the aisle to find Mellie a can of chili.

  “I think Will’s made Freda mad at him this morning, that’s what,” said Jeb.

  “Second time this month,” said Val.

  “One of us is always in the doghouse with women.” Jeb leveled a plank onto one of the sets of brackets.

  “You talking about Fern Coulter?” Val laughed.

  Jeb measured the distance for the next bracket. “Fern hates me too much to be mad at me. I’m talking about Angel. I don’t want to tell you what she’s done, though. She already thinks the whole town’s in our business.”

  “Shame to see her get mixed up with that Hopper boy.” Val slid the plank for the first shelf onto the brackets, eyeballed it, and then pulled it off.

  “So much for keeping things on the hush-hush,” said Jeb.

  Will bagged Mellie’s items and then joined them again with his hammer. “You talking about Beck Hopper? I saw him walking Angel to the soda shop after school one day this week.”

  Jeb gave a handful of nails to Will. “I guess I’m the last to know. Will, you and Freda raised girls. How you get a strong-headed girl to understand a little reasoning?”

  Will and Val both laughed.

  “The last person I’d want her to be seen with is Beck Hopper. And what does she do but hatch some romance with the worst boy in town.”

  “He’s not the worst boy,” said Val. “Ever meet Beck’s brother Clark?”

  “I know I’m not her daddy,” said Jeb. “If I could find him, I’d give him a good talking-to, though.”

  “Angel comes in here every Saturday hoping for a letter from her momma,” said Val. “Breaks my heart to see a girl like her torn away from her mother.”

  “Her momma ain’t right, Val,” said Will.

  “Can’t imagine her not asking for them kids.” Val drove another nail.

  “It ought not to be so.” Will shook his head.

  “Let’s get the next bracket up.” Jeb made several pencil marks and then held the bracket up to the wall. “Hold this in place, will you, Val?”

  “You and Miss Coulter could make a family out of this whole sitchyashun if she’d come off her harsh opinions of you.”

  “Wouldn’t matter. Angel doesn’t want a substitute family. She wants her own momma back. I’ve been thinking on something. Even if that aunt in Little Rock would take her in so she could be close to her, that would be better than living among strangers,” said Jeb.

  “Nazareth’s never known a stranger. This whole town treats those kids like they was our own. You watch and see if that Angel doesn’t up and marry and settle here among us.”

  “Can’t see that happening, Val.”

  “Maybe a girl like her would settle old Beck Hopper down. Sometimes a man that can’t be tamed can be settled down by the right girl.”

  “Val, I don’t think that right girl’s ever found you. You still the wildest bachelor in these parts.” Jeb handed the hammer back to Will and excused himself to fetch a bottle of pop.

  Val looked at Will. “You think he was making fun?”

  Angel rode into town with Beck Hopper only because Willie needed pencils. Beck swore his momma let him bring his daddy’s truck to school so no one could say they were doing wrong. Willie needed pencils, and Beck had the gas to get them to town. That was all.

  Willie rode in the back but had ushered Ida May into the truck to sit between Angel and Beck. He had given Angel a look and said, “I don’t think Jeb’ll like this.”

  Beck parked in front of Fidel’s Drugstore not two cars away from Horace Mills’s car. Two boys wiped down the Mills car with chamois towels.

  “Willie, take this nickel down to the Woolworth’s and buy your pencils. Then meet us back here at Fidel’s.” Before Willie could walk away, Angel said, “Take Ida May with you.” With her hand at the back of Ida May’s head, she propelled her forward.

  Beck tilted his head to one side to invite Angel into Fidel’s. She let him go in first and then glanced up the street before following him. Beck took the booth at the farthest end of the drugstore. Angel sat across from him, her back to the front of the store. Beck took off his coat, a ragged and oversized woolen that had most likely been passed down from one of his older brothers. “I’ll order the malteds,” he said.

  “Wait.” Angel slid a nickel to the edge of the table. “Here’s my share.”

  Beck hesitated with his hands in his pockets and then palmed the nickel.

  Angel half-smiled at Fidel, whose gaze connected her to the youngest Hopper. Beck, who ordered one chocolate malted with two straws, said to Fidel, “I could use me a job if you could use the work.”

  Fidel kept looking down where he wiped the counter. “Jobs is scarce these days,” was the only reply he gave to Beck. He set to work on the ice-cream shake.

  “Fidel, I heard you were needing a boy to work your soda fountain,” said Angel.

  “Here’s your shake, boy.” Fidel slid the malted down the counter to Beck.

  Beck paid Fidel and took the malted without looking up at him. He walked back to the table with his hair hanging over his face.

  “Beck, you ought to stand up straight when you talk to Fidel. If you want a job, you have to act like you’re the best one for it.”

  “Here’s your straw. That test Mrs. Garvey gave us today was a killer. I was never so glad for school to be over.”

  “She tests hard. But she makes me think about things like the past.” Angel saw the way he studied her hands and waited while she plunged her straw in first.

  “I just think about the day I’ll wake up and realize I’m not going back.”

  “I thought about quitting, just so I could go to work and try and get my little brother and sister over to Little Rock. But Jeb thinks it’s a bad idea to quit school.”

  “Maybe we all ought to take off for Little Rock,” said Beck.

  “You and me, you mean?”

  “Beats you being told what to do all the time by someone that ain’t your daddy.”

  “Jeb knows he’s not my daddy. He tries hard to act like one. I think he’s trying to make amends for his past.”

  “I heard about that too. Never heard of a preacher with his kind of past.”

  “Everybody has a past, Beck.”

  “Here comes your brother and Ida May.”

  “Where did you get the nickel for that malted, Angel, and did you think we might want one too?” Willie slid next to Angel and made her move toward the wall.

  “Here, take it, but go get your own straw,” said Angel.

  “I don’t want any of it,” said Ida May. “It’s
had boy’s lips on it.”

  “Jeb’s truck’s down in front of Honeysack’s.” Willie counted out six pencils, divided them three ways, and gave two each to Angel and Ida May.

  “Did he happen to see you?” Angel asked.

  “Dogged if I know.”

  “We’d better go. Beck, we’ll catch a ride home with Jeb. I’ll just tell him we caught a ride to town from school.” Angel pushed Willie to leave.

  “Who gave you a ride into town?”

  Angel looked up, startled by the sound of Jeb’s voice. “Willie needed pencils and . . .” She trailed off, realizing it was hopeless. Jeb’s face said he knew exactly what she’d done.

  “Let’s go,” was all he said.

  “See you at school tomorrow, Beck,” Angel said. She watched Jeb walk back down toward Honeysack’s with Ida May holding his hand before she grabbed Willie and retrieved their books from the back of Beck’s truck bed. “Jeb has no right to talk to me like I’m two,” she said to Willie.

  “I like Jeb. He treats us better than our own daddy,” said Willie. He ran and left her to complain alone.

  10

  Torches glowed all around the backyard of the Mills’s estate. Ancient cherries towered like elder statesmen with drooping beards plucked of all summer foliage. Jeb sat beneath a nearly roofless gazebo, pruned of its seasonal covering of ivy, and watched the sun set. Before the crowd wandered out to intrude on his oasis, he listened to the wind. Like the usher of autumn, it started at the back of the woods behind the estate and surged through the trees, making great oceanic sounds as though the sea had found its way through bough and brush. But the cherries and the ivy-entangled oaks guarded the grounds and kept the wind outside the garden’s gates.

  He watched the back door for any sign of Fern. He had heard that Winona had been asked by her banker cousin Oz to invite the schoolteacher.

  Two water gardens—one to his left and the other a distance behind him—brought a quiet kind of music to the private grounds. The liquid patter mingled well with the women’s talk from inside the kitchen. It seemed a shame to pluck a tune from the banjo, but he had promised one song to Winona. His fingers felt cold around the neck. She waited at the rear door, finishing a conversation she had started with one of the kitchen girls. Seeing him tuning under the tree, she joined him. Jeb twanged the first string and tightened it until it rang true and then tuned the others.

  “You did bring your banjo. Can you play anything besides hymns, or is that all you’re allowed to play?”

  “Been so long since I played anything, I can’t say as I remember what I did know. There’s a song about a river in heaven I like,” said Jeb.

  “A hymn on the banjo. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anything but jazz music on the banjo.”

  Jeb plucked a tune he had learned in Texas, a song that had the Hot Springs musicians gathered on the lawn turning to listen.

  “That’s no hymn.”

  “Sure it is.” He changed the words to fit a psalm and then sang it to her. One of the fiddlers and the guitar player from Hot Springs, unable to resist, joined in.

  Three young women waved at Winona from the backyard porch. She yelled, “Come and listen.” So they walked across the lawn in their Sears and Roebuck party dresses. Jeb’s fingers were warmed by now, so he segued into another song. When he finished, Winona clapped and asked him to keep playing.

  Jeb played two more tunes and then laid aside the banjo, nodding his thanks to his impromptu bandmembers. The sun had disappeared and put the torches to work, yellowing faces like the opening games in Rome.

  “We’ll have to let the musician have his supper, I guess,” said Winona. By now most of the party had spilled out into the gardens. The fiddler and guitar player rejoined the band from Hot Springs and helped set up on the lawn. They played in the final light of evening. Although the air was brisk, several older couples began to dance a waltz that had soft bluegrass undertones.

  “I don’t guess preachers can dance,” Winona said to Jeb.

  He considered her offer. “Best I don’t.” He noticed her dress had come to fit her straight from the box.

  She introduced Jeb to her three friends, all girls from campus about to graduate, like Winona, but unsure what they would do with their learning. Two had become engaged and showed their rings to the other two. They tried to entice Winona aside. She gave them an excuse and joined Jeb again.

  “You look cold. You want to go inside?” he asked.

  “The music’s not so great, is it?”

  “Nothing wrong with it.” He alluded to her bare shoulders. Her dress had an off-the-shoulder cape sleeve. “You look a little chilled, is all.”

  “The advertisement promised I’d look like a Hollywood star. Instead, all I look is cold. Mother’s got the food prepared. Had to hire two extra girls to make it all. I guess it’s safe to go back inside.” She rose, pulling him with her, holding on to his arm with both hands.

  Jeb followed her into the house.

  Somebody had started a fire in the den’s fireplace. A group of guests from Church in the Dell sipped punch as red as forest berries by the fire. Winona led Jeb to the buffet table. Four large stuffed hens, legs covered with white paper boots, decorated each table like cancan girls. In between the meat platters were more platters filled with roasted vegetables and large green bowls full of potatoes. Winona handed Jeb a plate.

  “A preacher in our midst. Tell Uncle to hide the booze.” Oz Mills, Winona’s cousin from Hope, picked up a plate, turned it upside down to read the label, and then greeted his cousin.

  “You’re back in town,” said Jeb. He had first met Oz at a church picnic, and then again downtown before his less-than-inspiring debacle as a charlatan. There was no love lost between the two—Oz had been dating Fern when Jeb hit town.

  “I heard you were still here,” said Oz.

  “Reverend’s got a knack for music, Oz,” said Winona. “You ought to hear him play.”

  “Did you bring anyone along, Nubey, or are you stag?” asked Oz.

  “I hear Fern might come.” Jeb did not want to imply he had committed to a date with Oz’s pretty cousin. That would be untrue and leave him without options. He wanted all options open with Fern in the house. He reached for a hot roll and could have sworn he saw two schoolteachers wrap food in napkins and stash it in their handbags. The word around town, that anyone who could do so finagled an invitation to the Mills party for the free eats, might be true.

  Oz didn’t comment any further except to say, “You two look like you’d make a good couple. Nice touch with the hair, Winona.” He excused himself to wait near the front door.

  “I’m sorry for my cousin, Reverend. Oz was a good boy when his momma was alive. That stepmother of his lets him get away with murder.”

  “He has a thing for Fern.”

  “He’ll never get her.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Fern doesn’t know what she wants.”

  “I once thought I knew what she wanted.”

  “You don’t. No one knows. Especially not Fern.”

  Mrs. Mills kept the platters filled all night even as she complained that Horace had limited her hiring of servants due to the Depression. One of the girls—Mrs. Mills called her Joyous—who was hired from south of town, managed to keep the candles lit and the punch bowl filled, even though Horace had told her to be stingy with the rum in the second bowl.

  Jeb stood by the wall chatting with several acquaintances while Winona spoke with her school friends. Through the window, he saw four youths creep across the lawn, having come through the woods and over the south garden gate. They wandered past several guests, who glanced at the boys under the miserly glow of lanterns then returned to dancing and eating. One boy looked something like Beck Hopper, but Jeb decided he’d imagined it.

  He crossed the sitting room and went into the kitchen. Joyous was complaining to the other servant, Thea, that Mr. Mills was making it impossible to kee
p food out for everyone with his stingy rules. She finished making a sandwich from a bread roll and ham and stuck it in a bag for later. Then she said, “Did you hear a knock, or am I imaginin’ things?”

  Before Thea could go to the back door, Jeb said, “I’ll answer.” It was a heavy oak door, painted the color of milk, including the metal around the knob and hinges. He opened it to find the four youths staring at him from the dark. “You boys need to move on down the street,” he said.

  “We heard there was food here, mister. You got a handout?” The tallest boy, lean faced with long wrists hanging out of his too-short sleeves, begged while the others stayed back in the shadows. Even with the shadow of twilight graying his face, his eyes had a begging look about them. Hunger no longer coupled with embarrassment.

  “We can’t give them a thing, Reverend. Mrs. Mills is keeping an eye on us, and she’ll know if food is missing.” Joyous stepped into the doorway and glanced out at who might be listening.

  “You’re that minister from the Church in the Dell, ain’t you?” said the lanky boy.

  “You boys go on and don’t be bothering the preacher,” said Thea.

  Jeb’s plate was filled and he thought of handing it to the boy. He opened the screen to get a better look at the youngest one. When he did, the youth moved farther into the shadows. “Let me see your face,” he said. When the boy evaded him, he asked, “What’s wrong with your brother?”

  “He ain’t our brother,” said the tall, lanky boy. He bowed his head, suddenly evasive.

  The other two moved aside to let the youngest come forward. But he turned and ran behind the cherry trees.

  Jeb handed his plate to the tall boy. He took two steps after the boy until his toe tripped against the bottom step. He righted himself. “I know you, don’t I?” he yelled.

  “Don’t let Mrs. Mills see you givin’ away her food,” said Joyous. “You boys take what’s on Reverend’s plate and hurry on out of here. Reverend, you all right? You need anything?”

  The other three boys followed the first, loping like calves after their momma. Jeb could not say for certain that any but one of them were Hoppers; only one Hopper, besides the boy’s mother, had ever set foot inside the church. He watched the blackened glen, the sway of treetops in the wind the only movement. The nerve it took Beck Hopper to show up at the banker’s party made Jeb wonder about his good sense—that or his guts. He’d have to watch Angel more closely. That kind of guts might beget dangerous ideas in a young girl.