“Just about my speed.”
The three of them made their way outside. As Bobby loaded their bags, he said, “Prue, you better drive. You know the roads on these hills better than I do.”
“All right.”
Prue got behind the wheel, and Bobby got in the backseat and immediately lay down, saying, “I’m gonna catch me a little rest. I never let all my weight down on those airplanes. Don’t see how they stay up.”
Mark moved into the front seat, rolled the window down, and said, “Let’s not have the air conditioner on.”
Prue started the engine. “No, it’s cooler today than usual.”
She pulled out of the airport, and soon they were on the highway that led through the Ozarks. She said nothing but leaned over and turned the radio on. At once they were treated to a noisy rendition of country western music, and Mark said wryly, “I guess we’re home again.”
“I don’t know. I’ve gotten to where I sort of like country western music,” Prue remarked. She swerved to miss an armadillo that leaped straight up in the air and then scurried for the side of the road. “Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad.”
“I guess you could say that about rheumatism.”
Prue laughed. It was the first attempt at a joke that Mark had made in some time, and as they moved along over the twisting roads, she enjoyed the air rushing through, blowing her hair back.
“Must be about plowing time,” Mark remarked.
“Yes. We’re passing some of those big tractors. I think one of those things probably costs more than a whole farm back up in the hills where we come from.” She spoke from time to time of the rivers they crossed, and the small towns. They took Highway 71 up to Fayetteville and then turned right on 412 passing through Huntsville. Mark swayed from side to side with the movement of the car. Once, the right wheel of the van hit a pothole, which made Bobby grunt. Mark said, “I see they still haven’t fixed the roads.” Prue called off the names of the small towns—Rudd, Alpena—and when they came to Bellepoint, she remarked, “I think we have good names here in Arkansas. They’re so peculiar.”
“You mean like Bald Knob? That’s peculiar, I guess.”
“Yes, or Toad Suck Ferry. I always liked that one.”
The two talked for a while about strange names in Arkansas, and Mark laughed, saying, “I always liked Booger Holler. That had a certain ring to it. I wanted to use it once in a story, but they told me I couldn’t. They said it was nasty.”
They moved along roughly, and finally Prue said, “Almost home now.” She rounded a bend in the road and said, “There’s the house. It looks a little bit lonesome now, and it’ll be that way with Logan gone.”
Pulling up in the front, she sighed. “Well, we’re here.”
Bobby got out, stretching stiffly. “You got a key to the place, Prue?”
“No, but it’s in the mailbox. I’ll get it.” She walked out to the mailbox twenty feet down the road, opened it, and pulled the key out.
“They sure are trustin’ folks around here. You wouldn’t do that in New York or Chicago,” Bobby remarked. He yanked open the doors and began pulling the luggage out. Prue said, “Come on, Mark.” She walked beside him, noting that unconsciously he allowed his arm to touch her to give him a sense of place.
“Got to fix these steps,” Prue observed, as they approached the flight leading up to the high porch. Mark reached out at once and found the railing, and made his way up. He turned at the top and said, “I imagine you can almost see our houses from here.”
“Right, and we’ll go see your folks, and mine, sometime. As soon as you like.”
“Not for a while, Prue,” Mark said quietly.
“All right.” Taking the key, she unlocked the door. “Come along, Bobby.” Leading the way inside, she said, “There are two bedrooms downstairs and one upstairs. Let me have the one upstairs. I always liked it. It looks out on the front yard. You and Mark can fight over the other two.”
Once they were settled down in the old house, Prue drove to the store and came back with a load of groceries. She immediately began fixing a meal, and the two men sat out on the porch rocking slowly in the cane-bottomed rockers.
“What time is it, Bobby?” Mark asked.
Looking at his wristwatch, Bobby grunted, “Almost seven o’clock. It sure stays light a long time in the summer around here.”
“What do you think about all this?” Mark could hear Prue in the kitchen and wanted to get Bobby’s true feeling.
The question caught Bobby off guard. He stopped rocking and ran his hand through his hair, then shook his head dolefully. “Shoot. I don’t know, Mark. Can’t be any worse than what I had in Chicago pickin’ up popsicle sticks for eight hours a day. What do you think?”
“Well, it’s a nice place. The weather’s good. It’ll be a little bit hot without air-conditioning.” He stopped suddenly and listened hard. “Listen, those are katydids. I’d forgotten they were so loud.”
Bobby listened hard and said, “We didn’t have those where I grew up, or at least I never heard them.”
Mark said quietly, “You remember when you came here and we went hunting?”
“Yea, and I went out and got drunk and messed it up with some girl. Whatever happened to her anyhow?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope she doesn’t have any big brothers around, or maybe a pa with a shotgun. I bet they haven’t forgotten it.”
“I’m guessing they probably have.”
Bobby took out a package of chewing gum and pulled one out. “Want some Juicy Fruit?” He handed Mark one of the sticks, peeled one, stuck it in his mouth, and began to chew rhythmically. “I remember that time,” he said finally. “You and I had a good time hunting. I wish we hadn’t done anything but that.”
“No sense going back and wishing things were different. You can’t change the past.”
“I know,” Bobby said. He began to rock back and forth, his fingers drumming nervously on the arms of the rocking chair. “I wish you could. I surely wish you could. I think back when Richard and I were growing up. The folks were always so proud of us. Well, they’re still proud of Richard. I’m the one that would have been better off if I had been put to sleep.”
“Don’t say that, Bobby. You’re young yet.”
“I’m thirty-five. That’s old enough for a man to have done something with his life.”
Mark turned his head toward the voice, and said, “Well, you have done something. Everybody in America knows who you are.”
“They know I pop pills and ruin young girls. That’s what they know.”
Mark considered the bitterness of Bobby Stuart’s tone. He felt more or less the same way and had for some time, but he had never said so to Bobby. Now he said, “I guess you’ve got as much talent as anybody in show business. What would have happened if you had gone another way?”
“I guess I could have been another Pat Boone if I had known God, but I don’t.”
At that moment Prue stepped out, holding the door open. “Come and get it. Supper’s ready.”
The two men rose and made their way into the dining room. Bobby sat down, running his hands over the old, polished oak. “You must have had many a meal here,” he said. “I’m sure it won’t be the same without Logan.”
“No it won’t, but he had a good life. You’ll be hearing about him from the people around here. They really loved and respected Logan Stuart.”
Prue sat down, and then without waiting, bowed her head and asked a brief blessing. The two men both bowed their heads, and when she was through Prue said briskly, “Well, Bobby. You start work tomorrow. Your community service.”
Bobby had lifted a forkful of mashed potatoes to his lips, but he halted and lowered it. “You mean you’ve already got that lined up?”
“Oh yes. I took care of it on the phone.”
“What am I going to do? Clean up papers on the highway?”
Prue shook her head. “You better eat he
arty. I hope you like pork chops.”
Bobby took a bite of the mashed potatoes, then tried some of the pork chops. Surprise came to his eyes, and he said, “Hey, this is good! I didn’t know you were such a good cook! I thought you just painted pictures.”
Mark was glad that Prue had simply filled his plate and put it in front of him without comment. Now he said, “What is Bobby going to be doing?”
“He’s going to work for Pearl Riverton.”
“Work for a woman? What does she do?” Bobby inquired, washing down another mouthful of pork chop with a sip of foamy milk.
“She runs a foster home for youngsters in a daycare center in town.” Prue smiled, and then mischief came to her eyes. “I expect she’ll have you changing diapers.”
Bobby suddenly choked. “No way! I’m not changing any diapers!”
“I expect you will if that’s what Reverend Pearl tells you to do. It’s that or go back to Chicago and maybe to jail.”
“Reverend?” Bobby stared at her. “You mean she’s a lady preacher?”
“Sure is.”
“What’s her denomination?”
“She’s a Pentecostal,” Prue said, taking a bite of the fresh corn bread.
“Pentecostal. You mean she speaks in tongues and handles snakes?”
“I don’t know about the snakes or speaking in tongues, but she says she’s Pentecost at any cost.” Prue laughed and said, “I’ve always liked Reverend Pearl.”
“She got a husband?”
“No. She’s a maiden lady,” Prue answered. “Give her a chance. She’s very firm but very fair. She’s done a lot for the town.”
They finished supper and listened to the radio for a while, and then Mark said, “I think I’ll turn in.”
“You better go too, Bobby. You’ve got your day with Miss Pearl early in the morning. You’re supposed to be there at eight o’clock.”
Bobby shook his head sadly and said, “I think I’d rather be back picking up gum wrappers on the streets of Chicago than doing anything for a Holy Roller woman!”
As Bobby pulled the van up beside the old, red brick building with the sign “Sunshine Daycare,” he had the impulse simply to gun the engine and drive on by. The small town mostly occupied one main street, and the Sunshine Daycare Center was at the very end of it. It was set back off the road, and a few small children were already playing some game in the front yard. The building had two stories and a steep-pitched roof, and huge white windows all the way across the front. A white, freshly painted picket fence surrounded the structure and the front yard, and for a moment Bobby sat there with the engine in neutral.
“I got to do it,” he sighed. He put the van in park, turned the key off, and piled out of the Econoline. As he moved through the gate, the children, about six of them, stared at him. They all appeared to be less than six years old, but Bobby Stuart knew little about children. “Where can I find Reverend Riverton?” he asked.
A blue-eyed, blond girl, no more than five, grinned, exposing a vast empty space in her front teeth. “She’s in there,” she said.
“Thanks, kid.”
Bobby moved up the walk, aware that the children were watching him curiously. He walked up to the double doors, which were propped open, opened the screen, and stepped inside. He found himself in a wide center hallway with doors leading off right and left and a set of stairs at the far end. “Anybody here?” he called as he moved down the hall.
He came to a door marked “Reverend Pearl Riverton” with a homemade sign and knocked on it. A muffled voice answered, and opening the door, he stepped inside. From across the room, a diminutive woman with silver hair and a pair of tiny granny glasses peered at him. She was sitting at a desk as erect as any master sergeant in the Marines, and her hair was drawn into a bun on the back of her head. It seemed to be pulled so tight that it appeared to Bobby it was pulling her eyes into a slanted position, but then he saw she was simply squinting against the bright sunlight coming down through the high windows.
“Yes? What can I do for you?”
“I’m Bobby Stuart. Prue Deforge sent me.”
Looking over her glasses, Reverend Pearl said, “Sit down,” nodding with her head toward a single chair that sat in front of her desk. When Bobby perched himself in it watching her warily, she said directly, “I hate your music.”
Bobby had expected anything but this. His eyes flew open, and he opened his mouth to say something, but then realizing that his fate lay in the slender hands of the woman across from him, he nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I reckon most folks your age would.”
“It has nothing to do with age.”
“No, ma’am,” Bobby agreed, wondering how to answer the severe look she was giving him.
“I think it comes straight out of the jungle, and it’s leading millions of young people straight to hell.”
Bobby blinked with surprise at this stern admonition. To save his life he could not think of a thing to say for a moment, then finally he shrugged. “Well, I won’t be making any music for a while.”
“That’s right. You’ll be earning your keep around here. Let me see your hands.”
“My hands?”
“Your hands!” Reverend Pearl said. “Let me see them! The palms!”
Bobby extended his palms, and when Reverend Pearl looked at them she made a disgusted sound and shook her head. “Not a callus on them! We’ll change that!”
Again Bobby had the impulse to get away as quickly as he could from the Sunshine Daycare Center and Reverend Pearl Riverton, but necessity kept him nailed to the chair. “I guess you got the best of the argument, Reverend,” he said. “I got some community service to do, and I guess I’ll try anything you’ll put me to.”
Reverend Riverton got up, and Bobby rose with her. She was, he saw, no more than five two or three, thin, and had hazel eyes. Despite the heat she wore long sleeves buttoned at the wrist, and her skirt came almost halfway between her knees and the floor.
“Do you know the Lord God Omnipotent?”
Bobby flinched at the question but shook his head. “No, ma’am. I don’t guess I do.”
“The more shame on you. With all that God’s done for you, and you don’t even know him. Well, we’ll have time to talk about that after you’ve done your work. Come along.” She wheeled and marched out the door. Bobby turned and followed her. She led the way to a room that contained buckets, mops, soap, and various other items of cleaning equipment.
“Clean the building.”
Bobby stared at her. “What part of it?”
“All of it. I haven’t had any help here. Dust everything that can be dusted. Wash everything that can be washed, and mop everything that can be mopped. I’ll be around to check on you from time to time.”
Bobby stared at the buckets and mops and sighed deeply. “Yes, Reverend,” he said meekly.
The rhythm at Logan Stuart’s house fell into place very quickly. Bobby got up and went to work every morning after being fed a good breakfast by Prue. He returned every afternoon shortly after five looking exhausted and with a string of complaints against Pentecostal lady preachers. But as the week passed his nerves seemed to grow more steady, and in the evenings he would even sometimes sit at the piano and play old songs. Never rock and roll, but the real old music that seemed to come from dim memories.
Mark and Prue went nowhere except to visit their folks on the second day of their arrival. Mark had told them, “I need time. Just give me time,” and they had all been quick to agree.
Now each day he rose early and went for long walks down the road alone, always coming back looking thoughtful. Prue was afraid that he would be hit by a car, but she never thought once of warning him. She began cleaning the house, cooking the meals, going to the store, and she herself would go to visit her parents during the day. Her father would ask her each time she went, “How is he today?” and she would reply, “No better, Pa.”
Mark was wrapped in a cloak of isolation. He was glad to be bac
k in the Ozarks savoring the hot summery days, the smell of open fields, and the fresh earth being broken by the plows. He walked in the woods with Prue, and she would mention the dogwood breaking into blossom and the cardinals that she saw from time to time.
In the afternoons he would sometimes go out to the pond behind Logan’s house and fish, using night crawlers that Bobby had put in a large coffee can for him. He used no cork and quickly learned how to catch the thumping brim and the fighting bass that occupied the large pond. He even learned how to clean them, and often at night they would sit down to fresh fried catfish and hush puppies. The brim were white and tender, breaking off in flakes, and once Prue said, “I remember the first time I ever caught a fish. It was over at Jenkins Creek. You were with me, Mark.”
Mark said, “Yes, I remember,” but offered no more conversation.
It was in the middle of the second week when Prue was almost desperate. Mark seemed to be getting no better, and his parents were wild with worry about him. They wanted to see him but knew he was holding them off. She went to her home one afternoon to feed her pets, those that were still left, and brought back Miss Jenny, her canary. As soon as she brought her in the house, Mark lifted his head and said, “What’s that?”
Going over to him, Prue said, “This is Miss Jenny, my canary. Doesn’t she have a beautiful voice?”
Mark listened as the bird’s melodious song arose, and he nodded. “I like that. I never had a bird.”
“Would you like to keep her in your room?”
Mark hesitated, then nodded. “You’ll have to show me how to take care of her.”
It was some time before they had set up Miss Jenny’s cage, and Prue had told Mark how to feed this tiny bird and change the paper in its cage. “She likes a slice of apple once in a while. Just cut it and slip it between the bars.”
Mark sat listening to the bird, and finally he turned to her and said, “Thanks, Prue.”
“Why, you’re welcome, Mark.”
Prue turned away, but somehow she felt she had gotten closer to Mark, and as the days passed he grew more and more attached to Miss Jenny. It was during this period that Prue began to pray for herself, and for Mark, and for Bobby. She had never known what it meant to pray so hard and so long. Some days she even fasted, keeping it from Bobby and Mark, and day by day as she prayed, faith began to grow in her; early one morning she was kneeling beside her window and something came to her so strongly that she almost felt as if it were an electric shock.
Dawn of a New Day Page 25