Nazareth's Song

by Patricia Hickman

  “I hope you’re not sorry, Reverend.”

  Jeb waited for the deputy to leave. “I’ll give you a ride back home, Edward.” He invited Edward into the parsonage. “I need to make a list of things I need from the store. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Jeb quickly inspected their pantry and found last week’s canned goods running low and a sack of dried beans only half full. The coal scuttle was close to empty; he would have to get up several times in the night to stoke the potbellied stove with more wood. He counted his folding money. After paying for a new truck part, giving money to the Wolvertons to buy coal oil, and taking Winona Mills to the Candelight Café for an expensive evening, Jeb had two dollars left.

  The thought of the Bluetooths’ land offer lying atop Mills’ desk waiting for him to buckle under the weight of the Ace Timber land scheme left Jeb feeling sick at heart. He would ask Edward about their situation.

  Edward sat smiling out in his truck. On the way out to the Bluetooth land, Jeb said, “Tell me how your momma’s doing, Edward.”

  “Not so good. I think Reverend Gracie thought that if he gave me work, it would help our family.”

  It had escaped Jeb that Edward would need payment for the bell. He reached into his pocket and found he had a small amount of cash.

  “I know we Bluetooths don’t show up at the whites’ church, but even so, my momma prays every night. I fixed the bell for her. So no charge to you, Preacher.”

  “I’m paying you anyway, Edward.”

  “I can’t take it. I did it to bring a blessing on my momma. She needs one right about now.”

  Jeb drove him home. The two of them together loaded the repaired church bell onto the truck. “Looks like a new bell, Edward.”

  “Just in time. Momma needs a miracle.”

  Jeb pulled away from the Bluetooths’. He was headed for the Bank of Nazareth.

  Horace Mills found Jeb’s request humorous. “A loan, Reverend? Why? Is the church in trouble?”

  “I’ll use my truck as collateral, if need be. I want to see Church in the Dell make it through the winter. It’s best I don’t take a salary for a while.”

  “No offense, Reverend, but your truck could be hauled away for scrap metal.”

  “Gracie tried to warn me, but I wanted to trust you. Ace Timber is nothing but a front to take land from people in Nazareth—”

  “That haven’t planned for the future.”

  Winona had said that, Jeb remembered.

  “But it’s no front, Reverend. You’re wrong about that. Ace Timber’s a legitimate partnership and a company that has blown into our town like a breath of fresh air. Reverend, you have to remember that you are a charity and I’m a lending institution. My business is business. When a man like Asa Hopper or those Indian Bluetooths squander what they own frivolously, get behind on their payments, it’s my place on behalf of my shareholders to make the hard decisions. When you stepped in to bring a healing balm to these tough decisions, I felt it was good for the bank and for the town—a way to show people that we aren’t coldhearted. Most banks are foreclosing. We’re finding buyers for those that are in trouble.”

  “Ace Timber is taking advantage of the poor, Mr. Mills. The office of the clergy can’t be used to help land sharks. Now I’m asking you to front the church a loan. My truck is surely worth something.”

  “You going to walk from house to house to visit the sick and dying when you lose that truck? Church in the Dell would not be here if it weren’t for men like Jefferson Watts, and yes, even me—men willing to step in and see that this town gets to keep a spiritual token in spite of hard times. Church in the Dell is that spiritual token, and you have the privilege of passing out that token every Sunday and Wednesday. Everybody needs hope, and somebody has to pay the bill for that kind of hope. You try and make it more than that and you’re elevating your station higher than any of us intended.”

  “I’m wasting your time,” Jeb said.

  “Take this blasted offer to the Bluetooths and tell them that signing on the dotted line is for their own good!” Mills pulled out his wallet. He counted out several twenty dollar bills. “This is your pay for you and those ruffian children you insist on keeping around.” He counted out another stack. “You give this to Ethel Bluetooth just for signing. She’s down to her last can of soup, I hear. Hurry now, and get this money to them before they starve, Reverend. When you look back on this later, you’ll remember this day as one where you were savior to a hungry family. Give yourself back your dignity. Begging’s for railroad tramps, not men of the cloth.” He scooped up the cash and walked around the desk to meet Jeb face-to-face.

  Jeb felt the cash and the Ace Timber offer slide into his hands. He felt weak, as though he had taken a punch in the stomach. Mona opened the door and let him out. She slipped into the banker’s office with more papers for Mills to sign. Jeb heard her ask Mills why he insisted on being so generous with the ones who would never appreciate his efforts. Mills replied, “If it weren’t for my daughter’s insistence, and a promise to Philemon Gracie, I’d not give this charlatan preacher the time of day.”

  Ethel Bluetooth stirred a boiling pot of lye soap out by their front porch. Edward sat on the front steps with the afternoon sun warming his head. He formed a scrap of leather around cardboard in the shape of a shoe sole.

  “Preacher!” Edward yelled. “Momma, it’s the preacher I’ve been telling you about. You know he picked up the bell.”

  “Your boy has a talent, Mrs. Bluetooth.”

  “I’m sorry you haven’t seen me around your church. Some people don’t like it when I bring my boys around. I think the old people still have funny ideas about Indians. Edward, go inside and bring out two cakes of soap for the preacher.” She looked at Jeb. “On the house.”

  Jeb tried to turn her down, but she said, “We’re not selling much right now anyway.”

  “The banker told me that you might be needing some money for food,” said Jeb.

  She spat on the ground. “Horace Mills ain’t nothing but a robber, a big bandit out taking people’s houses from them. Like he did the Hoppers’.” She drew out the paddle and propped it against the porch railing. Then she grew stiff, blinked once, and said to Jeb, “It isn’t true you’re helping Mills and that timber company take people’s land from them, is it? I never believed none of that about you.”

  Jeb turned the envelope over twice in his hand without looking up.

  Ethel saw the envelope. She took two steps toward him and said, “I’ve defended you, Reverend, every single time.”

  Jeb saw Edward standing in the doorway listening to his momma question Jeb. “You’d never work for Mills, would you, Preacher?”

  The wad of cash in Jeb’s pocket felt like an anchor weight. He drew it out, hoping the cash would soften the blow. “Mills asked me to give this to you, to help with your groceries for a while.”

  “You think I ought to sign those papers, Reverend?” Ethel began to cry.

  Jeb moved toward the porch. He laid the cash on Ethel’s porch and then backed away. “No, ma’am, I truly don’t. As a matter of fact, I’m taking these papers back to Mills and telling him that I wouldn’t let you sign them. I don’t know how far behind you are on payments, but surely if enough people know about this, they’ll help.”

  “Help the wife of a Cherokee? You tryin’ to be funny, Reverend?”

  “If we don’t sign the papers, we can’t keep the money,” said Edward. He scooped up the cash and tried to give it back to Jeb.

  “Consider it a loan, one backed up by Church in the Dell. Mrs. Bluetooth, you go and buy your family some necessaries. I’ll take these papers back to the bank and tell them you need more time, that you plan to keep your land.”

  Ethel ran up to Jeb and threw herself against him. “Reverend, I never saw no one do nothin’ like this. You’re not like any preacher I ever saw.” She cried.

  Jeb excused himself. He tucked the money that Mills had paid him in advance for maki
ng the delivery back into the bank envelope with the unsigned documents.

  He didn’t know how the rest of the day would turn out. But at least for the Bluetooths, it would be a better one.

  An old rowboat had been left tied up for the winter beneath Marvelous Crossing Bridge. Jeb pulled one end of the rope and brought the boat to shore. He rubbed the splintered wood and studied the inside of the craft. It had not taken on any water. He picked up a cane pole from inside the boat as he stepped into it and, using the thick end of the pole, pushed away from shore. He buttoned his coat, the woolen one that Winona had found so handsome. The last two mornings had not given way to a warm afternoon. The sky had clouded after he left the Bluetooths. By Christmas, if the cold weather persisted, the land would be a hard shell of frozen crust. Jeb shivered.

  The boat passed a cottage that had once been overgrown with lilies and a cloud of butterflies. The winter had turned the leftover flowers of last spring into a thick patch of tough brown reeds. Jeb had taken Fern on a boat ride past this cottage once. He remembered how taken in she had been by the gardens and cottage—and taken in by him.

  He allowed the craft to drift, driven by a northern wind. The boat passed by shacks and shorelines littered with old rusted bicycles and other abandoned items.

  It seemed to him everything that had bloomed in his life had died and been left to rot. The children he had taken in were growing up wild and as near starvation and need as when he had first found them hidden like refugees in the back of his truck. His role model had been taken from him, sick and possibly destined to live out the last of his years on medication and sedatives. His dream of leading Church in the Dell as a respected leader had taken him back to his point of beginning, a man who lived among suspicion and mistrust by those who had extended their faith in him. The harder he worked to succeed, the more pain he felt he brought to those around him. The worst part was not that he had somehow gotten entangled with the wrong woman, but that he had let the best one slip away. For the life of him, he could not remember why he had elected to serve in the office of clergy. Somehow the mission had lost its meaning.

  Jeb pushed the cane deep into the water to keep the boat near shore. But he had drifted too far, and the pole could find no bottom from which to push off of. He laid it inside the hull of the boat and rubbed his arms vigorously. He would have to wait for the boat to drift closer to shore.

  Jeb questioned God. Gracie had taught him to do that in times of crisis—to ask God the hard questions, to look in the Bible for answers. But the more he thought about his role in Nazareth, the more he hated what he had become. He thought of the Hoppers wandering the roadways like nomads with no place to call home. Then he imagined Angel coming home from school, expectant of a long-awaited trip to the Woolworth’s to buy stockings for her brother and sister but being told that things had changed. The lack of money seemed to echo across the water with no one to hear.

  Jeb could not understand how a body could get in so much trouble just by following the so-called leading of the Spirit. Philemon Gracie had a gracious manner about him, even when life took him through troubled waters. Jeb realized what a far cry his life was from Gracie’s. Men like him were cut from finer cloth, hand tailored by unseen hands for the pulpit. Jeb had fooled himself into thinking that he could rise to the occasion with any sense of purpose and mission.

  He pulled his coat tighter, turning up the collar around his throat. That is when he felt a cold prick against his chest. With one hand he drew out the chain that held the trinket given to him by Philemon Gracie. With the other he clasped ahold of the key, turned it over, and whispered, “Do Not Lay Down Your Plow.”

  Jeb’s head dropped forward and he hid his face, in case anyone from shore might think it strange to see a man in a drifting boat crying.

  26

  Jeb found the letter from the Pine Bluff family. He had looked for it for two days. He found it under his own bed. It had been shredded into a thousand pieces.

  “Angel, you come here!” he yelled.

  “It’s time to leave for school. Bye!”

  Jeb heard the front door slam and the ensuing voices of Ida May and Willie as they ran in the cold to catch up with their sister. Jeb watched them disappear around the church with holes in their stockings. He took the handful of shredded letter and threw it into the kitchen waste can. Thanksgiving was two days away.

  A movement from out front brought him onto the porch. He saw two men placing ladders against the side of the church. Next to them, Winona chattered.

  Jeb slipped on his shoes and met them out in the churchyard. “Morning.”

  Winona smiled, but Jeb knew it was only because he had not taken the bad news to her daddy yet about the Bluetooths. After his first cup of coffee, he would march into the bank and ruin what remained of their relationship.

  “Morning, honey,” said Winona. She had not called him by any endearing names until now.

  “Ladders and measuring tapes. Something I should know about?” Jeb asked her.

  “It’s impossible to surprise you, Jeb, what with you being around so much. But up in Hot Springs a man—an artist, really—designs stained-glass windows for churches. And—here comes the surprise—we’re buying stained-glass windows for Church in the Dell.” Her cheeks reddened as her joy at having shared such good tidings bubbled over.

  “We’re buying? Who is we?”

  “Daddy, me. Momma’s helping me pick them out, but I want you to come along too.”

  “We have a floor that’s half finished that we haven’t paid for yet. Church in the Dell can’t afford a Christmas ham, let alone stained-glass windows, Winona.”

  “Church in the Dell won’t get a bill for these windows. I asked Daddy to have his investors pitch in, what with the work you’re doing for them.” She said quietly, “With the mood he’s in right now, you can imagine how hard this was for me to coax out of him.”

  Jeb regretted that he had not already told Horace Mills he was turning down the delivery boy job once and for all. If he had to sell off household furniture to pay for the Bluetooths’ cash gift, he’d do that too. But the thought of Winona measuring for stained glass made him even more angry. “While stained glass is beautiful—” he began.

  “Church in the Dell will be the envy of the county.”

  “But I don’t want stained glass.”

  “You need it. It’s tradition.”

  “I can’t see through it, Winona. What’s the point of a window you can’t see through?”

  “It’s not that you want to see through it. You just want to look at it, appreciate it for what it represents.”

  “It represents money that could be used elsewhere.”

  “The windows are a donation, silly. You don’t understand.”

  “Like the church floor?”

  “You’ll get your floor. You and Daddy are working things out.”

  “You don’t understand, Winona. I don’t want stained glass.”

  “He knows what he wants, Winona. He’s the pastor of Church in the Dell.”

  Jeb spun around, shocked to see Fern eavesdropping while the two of them argued. She’d come from inside the church.

  “Nobody asked your opinion, Fern,” said Winona.

  “I want something I can see through. That’s all,” said Jeb.

  “Perfectly understandable.” Fern smiled at the two men who stood holding the ladder.

  “Fern, you are the worst person to discuss this with. You and your plain-Jane ways.” Winona turned her back to Fern. “Jeb, I’m sorry for surprising you. We can discuss this later.”

  “Plain-Jane, as in I decorate my walls with bookcases? Winona, my decorating habits have nothing to do with the minister’s decisions. Reverend Nubey wants windows he can see through. It’s simple enough for me to understand.”

  “Fern, you understand, don’t you?” asked Jeb.

  “I finally do,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Jeb turned to Winona.
“No stained glass for me. I’m done with all that.”

  “It’s taken you long enough,” said Fern.

  “I wish someone would explain it to me,” said the man at the bottom of the ladder.

  “Jeb, that’s not the only reason I came by,” said Winona. “Since you’re turning things around for the church, I thought you’d like to know that family from Pine Bluff wants to meet the Welby children this weekend. Sunday, they said.”

  Jeb could see several samples of stained glass leaning against Winona’s car. She had been the impetus all along, her daddy had said, for hooking Jeb into the Ace Timber deal. Now she was bullying her way into church decisions and decisions on his whole life. He looked at the workmen. “You fellers look worn out. Go inside for some coffee, and then kindly help Miss Mills gather up all of her belongings and take them away.”

  “Angel told me you were shipping them off to Pine Bluff,” Fern said matter-of-factly.

  “I’m not. That is, I was going to, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  “She told me about Edward Bluetooth too,” said Fern. “I’m glad you didn’t have him thrown in the jailhouse.”

  “Angel doesn’t know anything.”

  “If you don’t want the stained glass, then I guess I’ll give back the money I worked so hard to raise,” said Winona.

  “Or give it to the Hoppers,” said Fern. “If you can find them. I hear they’re in dire need.”

  “You two come back here and take this ladder,” Winona said to the two hired hands. “Forget coffee. Jeb, I don’t know why you’re acting like this, but I don’t deserve any of it.” She turned away. Then her hand came to her forehead. She teetered right and, without warning, slumped against the church wall. Her forehead slammed against the side of the building and then she wilted right onto the cold brown grass.

  “Is she kidding?” asked Fern.

  “We’d better get her up,” said Jeb. “Looks like a genuine faint.”

  Jeb and Fern waited outside on the porch of the doctor’s house. Horace and Amy Mills came driving up.