Fern sat next to Jeb on the porch swing. “Here comes Papa and Mama.”
The couple marched past Jeb and Fern without a word and bolted into the doctor’s house. After a few minutes, both of them could hear Horace ranting like he had lost all sense of reality. The front door slammed open. Horace ran out and lunged for Jeb. Amy followed, grabbed his arm, and begged him not to beat up the minister.
Jeb started to come off the swing, but Fern grabbed his arm. “Remember who you are,” she whispered.
“Horace, calm yourself!” Amy shouted.
“Mrs. Mills, what’s going on?” asked Jeb.
“It’s Winona.” Amy crumpled into a rocking chair. She sobbed into a handkerchief and then composed herself enough to say, “The doctor’s examined her. He says she’s pregnant.”
Fern looked at Jeb. She got up out of the swing and went to Amy to comfort her with a hug.
“I told Winona to stay away from you. You’re not a real preacher. I don’t know what you are, but now you’ve ruined our daughter’s life. You better tell me next you love her,” said Horace.
Jeb had never heard Horace Mills sound so vulnerable. He shook his head. “I don’t.”
“Jeb, maybe you should wait and discuss this with Winona,” said Fern. All the color had left her face. She could not look at him.
“He doesn’t love me, Daddy.” Winona listened to them from behind the screen door. She held a cold compress to her forehead. “It’s not his baby.”
Jeb looked at Fern. All of the life that had just washed out of her seemed to come flooding back as she breathed a sigh of relief. He said, “Winona, I think you need to have that talk with your momma and daddy now. It’s something you can all work out together.”
“Jeb, I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all of this mess. When I saw you, you just seemed the best daddy for my baby. I thought if you worked for my daddy and his investors that he would be more accepting of you for my sake. We’d all be the happy minister’s family.” Her words sounded like they’d been mixed into a salad of sarcasm.
“So all that talk about you wanting me to help Jeb, Winona, was your way of finding a solution to your little problem?” asked Horace.
“You always taught me to be a problem solver, Daddy.”
“You aren’t my daughter,” said Horace. “This isn’t how I raised you.”
“Sure it is,” said Winona. “I learned from the best.” She turned and disappeared from everyone’s sight.
Jeb took a breath. “Mr. Mills, I’m sorry to give you another piece of bad news, but I wouldn’t let Ethel Bluetooth sign away her land. But I did give her the money. If you want my truck to cover it, it’s yours. I told her that I’d ask the bank to give her more time. If you ask me, the Bluetooths are good for it.”
“You keep your truck, Reverend,” said Amy. “We’ll keep this all between us, if you know what I mean. Horace, we’ll send Winona away for a while so no one has to know.”
“She’d be better off with you, Mrs. Mills, her own momma.” Fern rubbed Amy’s shoulders and then returned to the swing to sit next to Jeb.
“This is Nazareth, Amy. You can’t keep anything a secret here. Winona will stay with us. We’ll see her through this. Reverend, thank you for bringing my daughter to the doctor. We’ll take over from here.” Horace collected his wife from the chair and without another word took her back in to face their daughter.
Jeb and Fern drove back to the parsonage together. Fern said little. Jeb said nothing at all. But somehow the quiet was good between them.
Jeb delivered the Ace Timber offer back to the bank. He handed it to Mona, glad to be rid of it. “Please count the money, Mona. I want to be sure we’re in agreement that it’s all there. All except what I gave to Mrs. Bluetooth.”
“You ought to take your payment out of it, Reverend. I think he’s expecting you to anyway,” she said.
“Best I don’t.” He waited while she counted out the crisp twenty-dollar bills.
“In case you’re looking for him, Mr. Mills won’t be coming in today.” Mona pushed away from her desk to take the envelope of cash behind closed doors.
“I gathered as much.”
Jeb left the bank. A weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And just this morning he had agreed to string a banjo for a man who had driven all the way from Hope to ask for Jeb’s services. Word was spreading and he, for once, was glad. He couldn’t let women like Florence Bernard guilt him into starvation, at least where the Welbys were concerned.
Before he could climb back into the truck, of all people, Florence Bernard came running up to him, red in the face and out of breath. “Reverend, it’s all over town what you did for the Bluetooths. That Angel of yours has quite a good little public-address way about her. I’m glad you’re letting the Welbys stay. They’re good kids, really.”
“I’m picking up my banjo again, Florence.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Is there anything I do that the whole town doesn’t know about?”
“Not really.”
“Pardon me, Sister Bernard, but I’ve got a man to meet about a banjo stringing.” Before Jeb could make his way around the front of the truck, Florence said with a smidgen of timidity, “I’ve been wanting to ask you about the whole banjo business, Reverend. Is it proper for you, a man of the cloth, to be playing the devil’s instrument?”
“Only when I want to chase away the devil,” said Jeb.
She watched him drive away. Thanksgiving was two days from now. It was time for the families to gather and give thanks again for how God had seen them through another year. Maybe “Depression” was a bad name for something that brought folks so close together.
27
Christmas in Millwood Hollow brought the smells of pine and smoking chimneys, bells chiming on the doorposts of every family, and finally the Church in the Dell Christmas social.
The ladies’ Christmas social committee had draped holly and garland over every window and windowsill. The schoolchildren had spent days pasting and gluing paper chains for the tree. Jeb and Fern had found the perfect pine one evening on a walk by the stream. The two of them went back together and cut it down the night before the social and nearly killed one another dragging it through the woods toward the church.
“You’re pretty strong, I guess, for a woman.”
“It’s a good thing you brought me along or you’d never get this thing back,” she groaned, yanking hard.
“This scrawny tree? I’m only letting you help so you’ll feel useful.”
“Letting me? Maybe I’ll let you take it back all by yourself.”
Before Fern could walk away, Jeb grabbed her around the waist and pulled her next to him. “Forget the tree. I’m not letting you get away with murder anymore, Fern. You have to answer for what you say to me.” He smiled down at her. “Tell me I’m the strongest man you know.”
“You’re not.” She laughed, biting her bottom lip.
“‘Jeb Nubey is the strongest man, the most intelligent, and good-looking to boot.’ Say it.”
She shook her head, no.
Jeb kissed her, at first just a soft brush against her lips to test the waters. Fern lifted her face to kiss him back.
He drew back his mouth. “Say it,” he whispered.
She let out a sigh with mock exasperation. “Jeb Nubey is the strongest man, the most intelligent, and most persistent—”
Jeb squeezed her close to him.
“All right, good-looking.”
Jeb kissed Fern while pine and the distant scent of snow perfumed the woods.
“Can you believe we’re here together?” she asked. She reached inside his coat and wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m dumb enough to believe it,” he said. They kissed until Ivey Long’s sleigh bells could be heard ringing down the road. “You owe me a wagon ride, Fern Coulter.”
“You’re on, Reverend!” They raced to the road, all the while dragging the tree behind them.<
br />
Willie climbed a ladder and stuck Ida May’s home-crafted star atop the tall evergreen. Jeb and Fern had situated it at the front of the church on the half-finished floor.
Angel carried a platter of fig cookies across the room and offered the first hot batch to Fern. “Miss Coulter, I heard you liked these. You take all you want.”
Fern was stunned. She took a couple of cookies from the platter and thanked Angel.
“It was Jeb who told me you liked figs.”
“I’ll remember to thank him, Angel.” She smiled at him across the room.
“Maybe I don’t say it enough, but I think he’s all right, at least for a feller from the sticks.” She waited a moment and then added, “In case you were needing my opinion about him.”
“I think he’s pretty all right too.” Fern helped Angel pass around the cookies.
“I can’t tell you, Reverend, how excited the whole town is about this party,” said Florence. “I don’t know if Church in the Dell is big enough to hold everyone.”
“It always works out,” said Jeb. “Don’t do any good to worry.” He greeted Will and Freda Honeysack as they came through the door. Freda handed Jeb a fruit basket. “Happy Christmas, Reverend Jeb.”
Fern and Angel came around with the cookie platter. “The Bluetooths are here,” said Fern to Jeb. “I was hoping they would come.”
Ethel carried in a basket full of soaps and candles wrapped in straw ribbon. “For the children,” she said to Jeb. She meandered through the party guests and laid her basket beneath the tree.
Several more families arrived, each one bearing a food offering for the Christmas shindig and a sack of homemade gifts to be distributed to all the children.
Edward Bluetooth entered with a heavy wooden craft of some sort.
Jeb met him at the door and offered to help carry the wooden object. “Edward, you been building something, I see.”
“A manger. For the Christ child. I’ll put it near the tree. Then can I ring the new bell?”
“Not until midnight,” said Jeb. “It’s tradition.”
“I wish I would have known. I could have brought a doll for the manger.” Fern watched the boy lay the manger between the basket of soaps and a sack of candy from Woolworth’s.
Soon the church filled to overflowing. Jeb helped Florence carve the smaller Smithfield ham. She said to him, “After you donated those smoked chickens, looks like we’ll have plenty.”
“Here come some fellers to pick with me,” said Jeb. Several men entered bearing guitars and a fiddle.
“Those are the boys that play pool down at that pool hall. They don’t play worldly music, do they, Reverend?” asked Florence.
“Decent’s the better word, Sister Bernard. Decent music.” Jeb excused himself to greet the last few guests who entered the church. Some of the women placed crudely wrapped gifts beneath the tree, completely encircling the base with presents.
Jeb peered outside into the frosty night.
“You look good in that shirt, Reverend,” said Fern as she came up behind him.
“Christmas isn’t as bad as everyone said it would be, is it, Fern?”
“If it were perfect, it wouldn’t be Christmas.”
“Fern, if I had my wish, I’d want to make everybody’s pain go away. I wonder if I’ll ever get over feeling like that.”
“Gracie would call you a good student just for wishing such a thing. But when things are imperfect is when we see the truth about God’s love.”
He felt her arms go around him. “Want to do a little necking in the woods with the minister, Miss Coulter?”
“Preacher, look what I got!” Edward Bluetooth ran toward Jeb and Fern holding a doll. “I prayed for God to give us the Christ child for the manger. It was in the first bag handed to me.” He ran back to the circle of children to place his gift back into the crude manger.
Fern dabbed her eyes. “Jeb, you’ll have to tell Edward that God gave him the Christ child long before tonight.”
“I think he is starting to understand that on his own.”
“He’s told you so?” asked Fern.
“Edward and I have been praying for the Hoppers to find a home. His momma made a contact in Hot Springs after writing to a relative of the Hoppers. Ethel Bluetooth has invited the Hoppers to come and stay with them. I think it’s going to work out.”
“Edward’s had two prayers answered, then. Jeb, look, the kids have gathered around the manger. They’re wrapping the doll in cloths just like the Christmas story.”
Angel pulled out her harmonica. She played to her friends around the tree, wheezing out what sounded as near a Christmas carol as anything else she tried to play.
Jeb picked up his banjo and carried it to the platform with Fern on his arm. Fern joined the Welbys and Edward at the manger. Jeb gave Florence Bernard an assuring smile. The three musicians, also lumbermen, pulled out their guitars and fiddle and joined the preacher in a night of music. It filtered out into the night, rising above the pines, a prayer of song.
Nazareth’s Song
Reading Guide
1.We find Jeb Nubey all at once thrust into the ministry. His deepest need is to find legitimacy and respect in Nazareth. How important is respect to the pulpit and do you believe the pastorate has maintained a degree of respect in modern society?
2.Jeb derives his education primarily from Philemon Gracie and self-study. Education by apprenticeship has gone out of vogue. Would students today find benefit through an apprenticeship?
3.Fern Coulter is uneasy with Philemon Gracie’s departure. Is her mistrust of Jeb based upon knowing his past or because she was stung as a romantic interest?
4.Angel is sensing a conflict in Jeb’s ideals. She believes the Hoppers are being treated unfairly, like outcasts. Is it popular in the church to bring aid to outcasts? Does the church do a thorough job of mending the wounded?
5.Jeb rushes to bring peace to the town riot. Gracie would not have gotten involved, although he most certainly would have made himself available to the wounded and jailed. Jeb’s involvement eventually caused a conflict of interest as the pendulum of popular opinion swung away from Horace Mills. When is the role of a peacemaker acceptable and should we ever refrain from political involvement?
6.Horace and Winona Mills both offer monetary gifts to Jeb and Church in the Dell during a time of great need. But eventually the money is found to be tied to Mills and his special-interest group, Ace Timber. Should the modern church accept funds from groups not otherwise affiliated with churches or ministry? From government funds?
7.Jeb’s involvement in the lumber mill’s woes draws men to church that had never shadowed its doors. Jeb is pleased to see his decision has caused the church to grow. But eventually these same men’s livelihoods are threatened as Ace Timber gains control of the town lumber industry. Is church growth at any cost a viable solution for reaching those who don’t know God?
8.Angel and Jeb are at odds as Jeb struggles with his role as a stand-in father. What authority issues are raised when a non-birth parent tries to counsel a child?
9.Winona lures Jeb into her web of deceit so that she can use their relationship as a handy explanation for her pregnancy. Jeb has moments where he senses her eagerness, but then he allows Winona to continue in her seduction. Is it that easy to lay aside common sense and spiritual restraints in order to settle for a false love?
10.Jeb finally sees the danger of trading lust for real love. He finds in Fern not only a romantic interest, but friendship and the seeds of trust. He had to earn all of those things and it took time. Is it popular to take time for a relationship to grow before seeking intimacy? Is it practical or even possible considering our modern mores?
11.Jeb comes to realize that community respect is less important than choosing to do what is good, right, and honest. Jesus knew popularity for only a short season. With Jesus as our model, is popularity the most important quality we can gain as an individual or as a chu
rch?
Don’t miss Fallen Angels
Book One in
The Millwood Hollow Series
Jeb Nubey hides a secret about his past that has left him alienated from his family and hiding from the law. Against his better judgment, the Welbys, a trio of abandoned siblings, convince him to give them a ride into the town of Nazareth. But a storm and the loss of everything he owns forces Jeb and the Welby waifs to form an unlikely alliance, posing as a widowed preacher and his family.
The oldest girl, Angel, thinks it’s a match made in heaven. But Jeb is reliant on Angel to write his sermons, and the ruse of convincing the Church in the Dell congregation that they are legitimate threatens to unravel at any moment. Also unraveling are Jeb’s feelings for the local school teacher, Fern Coulter, in this extraordinary tale of redemption.
Look for Book Three in The Millwood Hollow Series
Coming June 2005
Don’t miss If I Had You
by Deborah Bedford
Nora Crabtree has long since given up on her wayward daughter. When Tess turns up pregnant and begs for help, the last thing Nora wants is to get involved again. But when Tess leaves, the Crabtrees have no choice but to bring her motherless baby into their home. Nora believes that God is giving her the chance she prayed for to right mistakes from years before. She pours all the love that Tess had rejected into this new child.
Then comes the day when Tansy Crabtree vanishes on her walk from the bus stop. Nora and Tess must struggle with a relationship they thought had died many years ago—and with the questions of what is best for the little girl whom they both want to love. And Nora discovers that God may answer more prayers than she ever bargained for.
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