Dawn of a New Day

by Gilbert, Morris

  “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered. “Bobby and Mark. They’re both going to be all right.” She bowed her head, and as the tears flowed down her cheeks, she began to thank God for what he was going to do.

  22

  THE OLD RUGGED CROSS

  Bobby Stuart had never found anything quite as aggravating as the time he put in working for the Reverend Pearl Riverton. The tiny woman seemed to have the energy of a dozen Dalmatian puppies, and she insisted that Bobby have at least half that much. Every morning he got up groaning and dreading his arrival at the Sunshine Daycare Center, and by late afternoon he found himself praying that the time would pass. Once he thought, The first time I prayed in many a year—but it’s the first time I’ve had a female Adolf Hitler running my life.

  “I think I’m gonna quit and go back to Chicago,” he complained to Prue and Mark as they were eating breakfast one Saturday morning. He accepted four plate-sized pancakes from Prue, picked up a jar of amber sorghum, and baptized them recklessly. He cut the pancakes into four pieces, stuck a quarter of one in his mouth, and nodded. “These are good, Prue. Best pancakes I ever had.” He swallowed, drank down half a cup of the strong, black, unsweetened coffee from the huge mug beside his plate, and continued to grumble. “I declare that woman is like nothin’ I ever saw on this earth! Work, work, work! That’s all she ever wants—except, of course, when she preaches at me!”

  “She does that a lot, does she, Bobby?” Prue had cut her own pancakes up and put a small portion in her mouth. Bobby’s complaining amused her, for without his knowledge she kept in close touch with Reverend Pearl and knew that Bobby was fulfilling his obligations despite his complaining.

  “Preach at me!” Bobby exclaimed. “Two fellas were in the office the other day while I was mopping. One of them said, ‘Did you ever hear Reverend Pearl preach?’ and the other one said, ‘I never heard her when she wasn’t,’ and I popped up and said, ‘Amen, brother!’”

  “Well,” Mark said as he sipped his coffee, “if she’s preaching at you, I guess you’re getting a break from your detail.”

  “No such thing!” Bobby snorted. He crammed another huge portion of pancake in his mouth and said in a muffled voice, “She preaches at me while I’m working! If I didn’t go off and get lunch down at the Dew Drop Inn, she’d preach at me while I was eating!”

  “I don’t guess a little preaching will hurt you.” Prue looked with approval at Bobby and Mark. “Both of you are looking better. Lots of this good Arkansas sunshine and fresh air.”

  Mark continued to sip his coffee but did not respond. It was true enough; he did feel somewhat better, but he still had nightmares of the last patrol, and the faces of his buddies would come floating to him in the dream. Sometimes he went to bed at night feeling calm and peaceful, more than since he had been wounded. But then the dreams would come, and the faces would appear seeming to plead with him, or seeming to accuse him just for being alive, and he would wake up tense and confused, wondering why he had been spared when better men had died.

  “Well, I get tomorrow off, anyway. She won’t make me work on the Sabbath,” Bobby said with satisfaction. He tossed his napkin on the table, picked up his coffee, drained the cup, and started for the door. “Got to get started. Old Simon Legree will have her whip out if I’m a minute late.”

  “Have a good day,” Mark mocked.

  Bobby turned around and stared at him. “You know I don’t care much for what people say, but that kind of hacks me off!”

  “What hacks you off?” Mark asked in surprise.

  “That saying! Have a good day! It don’t mean nothin’!” He scowled broadly and ran his hand through his thick auburn hair. His electric blue-green eyes seemed to flash, and his voice rose as he said, “Have a good day! Everybody says that! Nobody cares whether you have a good day or not!”

  “I think it’s just a way of saying good-bye,” Prue offered.

  “Well, why don’t they just say good-bye then? You know what really set me off? When I left the trial with this muddy sentence that female judge laid on me, the guard at the door said, ‘Have a good day.’ I wanted to punch him out.”

  “Well, have a good day anyway, and I really mean it,” Prue smiled.

  Bobby’s shoulders relaxed, and he grinned back at her, which made him look much younger. “All right. You two have a good day.” He turned and left the house, got into the van, and drove away. The morning was cool for May, and he took in the men working in the fields he passed. Nearly all the houses out in the country had gardens, and women wearing cotton dresses and bonnets were out working in them. Many of them lifted their hands and waved to him as he passed, and he blew his horn in a signal reply. “You won’t catch people waving to you in New York or Los Angeles,” he said. “They’re all afraid you’re going to mug ’em.” Then he suddenly thought, All my life I wanted to live in those big places, and now here I am braggin’ on the Arkansas hills. I must be losin’ my mind. It’s that woman’s fault. She’s gonna drive me crazy.

  He reached the daycare center, parked the van, and got out. He was surrounded at once by a group of children who were holding their hands up, and he reached in his pockets and began handing out candy. He had bought a huge stock that he kept in the van, and he kept his pockets full of it. Reverend Pearl had warned him, “Those children won’t have a tooth left in their heads if you keep on feedin’ ’em candy.” However, she had not forbidden it, so he passed out the M&M’s and silver-covered Hershey chocolates until he reached the door. “That’s all,” he said, shooing them away. “Go on now!”

  Stepping inside, he went at once to work. Some of the old windows had sash cords made of cotton rope, and they had broken. Now the only way to keep them up was to prop them with a stick. He hated that for some reason and was determined to replace them all with nylon. He had not said a word to Pearl about this but had gone about it on his own. Once she came and looked over his shoulder as he replaced a rotten cord, and asked, “What are you doing that for?”

  “I like things to work right,” he said shortly.

  “The Lord will probably come back before those wear out,” Reverend Pearl said.

  Bobby turned to her and said, “I wish he would, but in case he don’t, these cords will last another hundred years, I reckon.”

  The two stared at each other, and she finally left him to his work.

  After she left the room Bobby thought about Reverend Pearl. She had driven him out of his mind, for somehow her words had a power that he could not define. Usually they were brief words oftentimes connected with a Scripture. He had heard enough sermons while he was growing up, but he had been ashamed to even go into a church considering the lifestyle he had led for the past ten years. Now as he polished the flatware that the children used when they ate their lunches, he thought about her hazel eyes, which seemed to have the power of laser beams. She seems to know what I’m thinkin’, and sometimes I think she knows everything I’ve ever done. His thoughts continued on the woman until suddenly Reverend Pearl herself came back in and said, “When you finish that, go out and bring in some sassafras roots. I been yearnin’ for some sassafras tea.”

  Looking up with surprise, Bobby shook his head. “How am I supposed to know what they look like?”

  “You don’t know sassafras roots? Your education’s been neglected. Come on with me.” She marched out the door, and Bobby put down the hardware and followed her. The woods were only a hundred yards past the daycare center, and she marched him directly toward a small growth and said, “That’s sassafras. Dig up the roots and bring ’em inside.”

  “All right, Reverend Pearl.”

  He began to work at the roots, aware that she was watching him. He said suddenly, “Well, I won’t have to put up with you tomorrow, preacher lady.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Why, tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “You don’t get tomorrow off.”

  Bobby dropped the roots and straightened u
p, anger coursing through him. “What do you mean I don’t get tomorrow off? It’s Sunday! The Bible says you’re not supposed to work on Sunday!”

  “You’re supposed to work for the Lord on Sunday,” Reverend Pearl said defiantly, looking up at him. She was not much larger than some of the children that attended the daycare center, and yet there was a strength and a power in her that almost cowed Bobby Stuart.

  “I don’t think it’s right! Here I’ve worked six days, and I ought to get Sunday off!”

  “You mind what I tell you, Bobby Stuart! I’ve got a chore for you tomorrow!”

  “Doing what?”

  A rare smile played around the lips of the elderly woman. “Playing piano in church.”

  Bobby stared at her, his eyes flying open with astonishment. “I’m not playing the piano in your church,” he said adamantly, “and that’s that!”

  “Yes, you are! I’d hate to turn in a bad report and hate to see you get throwed in the pokey, so you be at the First Pentecostal Church in the morning at ten o’clock.”

  Bobby wanted to stalk away and drive off leaving her flat, but something made him say, “All right. I’ll come and play for the service. What time is it over?”

  “It’s over when the Lord says it’s over!”

  “Well, could you give me an average?” Bobby asked in exasperation.

  “On the average, we start when the Lord begins to move, and we stay until he’s through. Usually about two or three o’clock. Sometimes a little later.”

  “You stay at church five or six hours?”

  “People stay at them dumb concerts of yours that long, don’t they? You be there at church like I’m tellin’ you!”

  “I don’t have anything to wear to church.”

  “We only got one rule about clothes at our church,” Reverend Pearl said, and her eyes twinkled with a light of humor. “You have to wear clothes; you can’t come nekkid.”

  Bobby burst out into laughter. “All right, preacher lady. I’ll be there. But what are you gonna do if I start playin’ one of them Elvis Presley rock-and-roll songs?”

  “You don’t want to get struck dead. I wouldn’t advise it.”

  Bobby spent the rest of the day mostly thinking of his chore the next morning, and that night after supper he broke the news to Mark and Prue. “Well, tomorrow will be a first for me—first in a long time, I mean.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday. What are you going to do?” Mark questioned.

  “Going to play the piano at the First Pentecostal Church.”

  Prue laughed suddenly, then said, “I’m sorry. It’s not funny, Bobby.”

  “Well, it is in a way. Here half the preachers in the United States are tellin’ their congregation how Bobby Stuart’s leading young people to hell, and I’m going to church to play the piano for a lady Pentecostal preacher with a bun on her head so tight it makes her eyes squint.”

  Mark found this amusing and chuckled softly. “I think it’s a great idea. What do you say we go take the service in, Prue?”

  “Oh, I’d like that,” Prue agreed instantly.

  “Aw, come on! You two don’t need to come. I’ll feel enough like a fool without you two there.”

  “No, we’ll all three go,” Prue announced. She sat there listening as Mark poked fun at Bobby, and at the same time there was something going on inside her heart. She had felt the Lord speaking to her about Bobby Stuart, particularly, which surprised her. She had been praying so hard for Mark, and Bobby had been on her heart, but not to the same degree. Yet, for the past three nights she had prayed fervently for him to find God and had wanted to ask, “Lord, why should I be praying so hard for Bobby? It’s Mark I love and want to see redeemed.” Now as she sat there on the porch listening to the whip-poor-wills calling their mournful tune, she prayed, “Oh, God. Maybe this will be the time. Do something in Bobby’s life tomorrow at church.”

  The First Pentecostal Church was a simple white frame building, and the paint itself was none too fresh. Strips of it were peeling, and Prue made a mental note to see to it that the church was painted. She herself was not Pentecostal, but she loved Reverend Pearl, who had been a character in town for as long as she could remember. She had even attended some of the services there, so was familiar with the inside of the ancient structure. Bobby was not, however. He had put on a pair of clean blue jeans and a white shirt but wore no tie. His face glowed from a fresh shave, and his hair was brushed back carefully. As he looked around the auditorium—which consisted of one single large room with home-built pine benches with no cushions, a piano, two guitars, and a set of drums at the front—he grinned at Prue. “Well, they got guitars and drums. I won’t be too much out of place.”

  Reverend Pearl, wearing a plain, gray dress buttoned up to the throat and at the wrists, came at once to where they stood. The auditorium was packed, and an odd expression glinted in her eyes. “Well, Mr. Bobby Stuart. Are you ready to play the piano to the glory of God?”

  “I’ll do the best I can, Reverend,” Bobby said, looking around uneasily.

  “You might not know some of these songs. Do you know anything besides rock and roll?”

  “Oh yes, Reverend Pearl,” Prue said quickly. “Bobby grew up in church. He knows all the old songs. All the old Baptist songs, anyway.”

  “Well, the Baptist songs are good. You can put a little pep in ’em.”

  Bobby followed the diminutive woman to the front and sat down at the piano. Mark and Prue took their places in one of the hard, uncomfortable seats, and Prue whispered, “Have you ever been at a Pentecostal service?”

  “Never have.”

  “They’re a little bit different from what you’re used to, I think.”

  “I’ve heard they climb over the benches to get at you and drag you down the aisles.”

  “That’s not true. Not of Reverend Pearl anyway. I heard someone say that once to her, and she said, ‘If a body ain’t got the gumption to get out of a pew and walk twenty feet to the front of a church, then he ain’t ready for God.’”

  Mark grinned despite himself. “I think Bobby’s pretty shook up over this. I talked to him while he was shaving and he said he nearly cut his throat.”

  “He’s very nervous talking about God. I think he’s been running from the Lord most of his life.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right. He’s talked to me a few times about it.”

  “He has? I’m surprised.”

  “It’s kind of a strange thing,” Mark said quietly as the musicians were tuning up their guitars and Bobby was running his fingers over the keys in a quiet fashion. “Bobby puts up a hard front, and he’s done a lot of things that aren’t right, and the world has practically bowed at his feet, but underneath he’s unhappy and very insecure.”

  “I’ve noticed that about young girls who are very pretty. The beauty queens. You remember Maxine Baker? She became Miss Arkansas. When we were in high school she was the prettiest girl there, but she told me one time she never was satisfied with the way she looked.”

  “I never knew that,” Mark muttered in surprise. “I wonder why that is?”

  “I think anybody who trusts in their looks or their talents would never really know whether people liked them for themselves or for something else.”

  Mark sat there listening to the congregation sing. Some of the songs were strange to him. One of them was called “The Royal Telephone” and urged people to call up God on the telephone. It struck him as humorous at first, but as the untrained voices of the congregation boomed out, he thought, These people get some sort of blessing out of that. I guess it depends on how you grew up. They wouldn’t get much out of a high church Episcopalian service, and I can’t imagine what an Episcopalian would think of singing like this.

  He could not see Bobby, of course, but he could hear the piano as it wove its way through the melodies. He remembered Bobby telling him he had played in church for years before he became a celebrity. Even now with the crudeness of the singing, there
was some sort of magic in the way that Bobby Stuart managed to play the piano. He knew that Prue felt it too, for he felt her arm pressing against his, and once she whispered, “What a great gift Bobby has, and how much of it he’s wasted.”

  “How does Bobby look?” Mark inquired, having to lift his voice.

  “He looks like he’d rather be anywhere in the world but here.”

  Prue’s words described Bobby very well. He sat bolt upright at the piano and had no trouble with the music. There was a genius in him for anything connected with singing or playing the piano, but as the old songs continued for over an hour, he found himself becoming more and more miserable. One of them, he remembered, was the first hymn he ever learned to play. It was “At the Cross,” and Reverend Pearl insisted on singing it again and again:

  At the cross, at the cross

  Where I first saw the light,

  And the burden of my heart rolled away,

  It was there by faith

  I received my sight,

  And now I am happy all the day.

  The words seemed to hammer into Bobby’s head—And now I’m happy all the day. He was very much aware that throughout the years he had become more and more unhappy, and now the thought came to him, Where did I lose it? Back when I was a kid I was happy. When I first started playing for the public I was happy, but I lost it somewhere along the way.

  Reverend Pearl, at one point, called for those who were sick to come forward and be prayed for, and Bobby watched as several people came down. Reverend Pearl put her hands on their head or shoulders, whichever she could reach, and prayed at the top of her lungs, and he wondered if any of them actually were healed.