At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  Elijah looked around the room and felt his pain ease. The floor was old oak tongue and groove. The bed was an iron bedstead painted white. The dresser was old, as well, and covered with a white runner, freshly starched and ironed, by the looks of it. There was a vase of white laurel blossoms on the small bedside table and what looked to be a hand-braided rug on the floor beside it. His heart eased for a moment. These were things he remembered.

  He set his suitcases in the closet, then went into the sitting room. It had three walls of windows and was sunny and warm. There was an old white porcelain cabinet and sink like the one his mother had had, a small drop-leaf table covered with a red-and-white cloth. A basket of apples sat upon it. The sofa was covered with a blue-and-white quilt. There was an overstuffed red chair beside it. The worn places on the back and arms were covered with white doilies.

  He sat down in the ladder-backed chair by the window. It looked directly out onto Mary Ellen’s garden, and he could see parts of it through the leaves of the trees. There were dogwoods, rhododendron, mountain laurel, and under them a heap of flowering plants. A statue of some kind. After a few minutes he rose up. He should go out to the kitchen and see if there was something he could do to earn his supper.

  He knocked on the front door, but no one answered. After a moment he went around the side of the house to the back. He climbed the steps onto the back porch. The door was open, and he stood there in the doorway and saw her at the sink, her hands on the rim, her head bent, shoulders lifting slightly as she took a deep breath. He shifted his weight, and she must have heard him. She half turned, then wiped at her eyes and face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Come in please. And forgive me. It’s awful to greet you like this.”

  He looked at her face, at the grief in her eyes, and his heart moved in compassion. “Sorrow and I are no strangers,” he said quietly.

  She looked at him for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to say more.

  “My son was that little girl’s doctor,” she finally said and pointed toward the television. He nodded and his heart ached for Mary Ellen and her son. For his seatmate on the plane. For all of them, and he knew then that he had stumbled into a house of grief and sorrow.

  “I guessed that,” he said. She did not ask him how. He did not feel the need to tell her.

  She fixed him a cup of coffee, and they talked briefly, catching up on just the facts of their biographies. He learned that she had two sons and a daughter and that her husband had died two years before. He told her his spare history, seeing once again the shadow of might-have-beens pass across her face.

  “I’d better start supper,” she finally said with that gentle smile he remembered. “My children and grandchildren will be joining us.”

  In spite of her kind inclusion, he felt out of place, especially given the circumstances. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked, meaning more than food.

  She glanced away and shook her head. “Just make yourself at home.”

  He watched television for a few minutes, but the news was jarring, the ads frantic, and after a while he went outside, walked into the garden, and sat down beside the statue of the little girl.

  Seventeen

  It was a strained reunion, as Sam had feared it would be. Laurie was there, of course, with her husband and their youngest son. Their other son and daughter were off at some practice or another. Ricky came with Amanda and their three little daughters, and that made some liveliness, took Sam’s mind off CNN, which he checked compulsively every hour or so, though his attorney had promised to call him if anything changed in Kelly Bright’s condition. Mama was in a state. Torn between joy to see him again and grief for his situation. And the poor lodger, the old missionary from Africa, was set down right in the middle of it all. He had gone to the guesthouse right after supper, pleading weariness. Sam regretted coming home. He confided that fact to Ricky as they sat outside on the porch watching his children play after supper.

  “It was a mistake to come here.”

  Ricky shrugged. “I know you think it is, but what’s so bad about letting people share your troubles?”

  “There’s nothing they can do about it, and it just makes them miserable.”

  “You think Mama’s happy when you’re not here? She’s always grieved. It’s just that most of the time you’re not here to see it.”

  Sam shrugged.

  Ricky pressed his point. “But then, maybe it’s not Mama’s discomfort you’re really concerned about.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  That was just like his brother. He tossed out his little darts, then feigned innocence.

  “What are you going to do now?” Ricky asked. A long overdue question and one each member of his family had gone out of their way not to ask.

  “I’ll stay a few days,” Sam said. “I’m going to clean out the house and put it up for sale. I’ll go over and have a look at things tomorrow. See what needs to be done.”

  Ricky looked surprised. “Why the rush now? It’s sat empty for five years.”

  Sam took a deep breath and said the words for the first time. “Annie filed.”

  Ricky took that in, then shook his head, a new compassion lighting his eyes. “Bro, it’s been a tough week for you, hasn’t it?”

  Sam was still for a moment. “Things are just drawing to a close,” he said. “Like Ecclesiastes says. There’s a time for everything. There’s a time for things to begin and a time for them to end.”

  Ricky frowned and shook his head. “I’m not sure the Lord intended this particular application,” he said doubtfully. “You’ll have to ask Reverend Lindsey about that one.”

  Sam gave a forced smile.

  “I’ll bring the truck over and help you clean out the house,” Ricky offered quietly. “What are you going to do with all of Annie’s things?”

  “Put them in storage.”

  “There are some places out toward Asheville.”

  Sam nodded. He wished he smoked. His hands needed something to do.

  “You going to list it with Jim?” Laurie’s husband sold real estate.

  “I suppose so. We’ll probably have to sell the land and the house separately. I can’t imagine anybody wanting all twenty-six acres. I just don’t want any developers buying it, and I don’t want it to be somebody’s vacation home.”

  “Awfully picky for somebody who doesn’t care,” Ricky observed. Sam didn’t bite. “You should get a pretty good penny for it,” Ricky observed after a moment. “Land’s dear around here. I probably couldn’t afford my own house if I had to buy it now.”

  Amanda came to the door. “You about ready to head home, honey?” she asked Ricky. “It’s time for the kids to get to bed. They’ve got school tomorrow.”

  They called their children and even that simple ritual sent ripples through Sam. He remembered his own daughter playing on this lawn, hiding behind the hydrangea, swinging there under the tree.

  He visited with his mother until she retired, then went back onto the porch. He sat there watching the velvet darkness fall around him, hearing echoes, seeing shadows of people who were no longer there.

  Eighteen

  Carl Dalton was up, as usual, with the chickens. He fed them every morning and had even named his favorites. He tossed out a handful of corn now. He liked getting up early. That gave him time to read his Bible and shower and still make it to the Waffle House in plenty of time for his steak and eggs. Diane had regular purple hissy fits about the fact that he left his bowl of granola and oat bran muffin untouched each day, but he was an old dog and didn’t want to learn any new tricks. He smiled, thinking about his wife. She was a good fifteen years younger than he was, and there had been plenty of naysayers when he’d brought home the pretty young woman from Georgia, but they had been together for over twenty years now, and he loved her as much as he had the first day he’d laid eyes on her. His only regret was that Annie had never taken
to her. But you couldn’t change other people. You could only choose whether you would love them or not.

  He smiled when he thought of his daughter and felt a deep satisfaction. She was home. Bedraggled, yes. Confused, yes. Angry and hardhearted, yes and yes. But she was home, and he had a conviction as deep and solid as the hills underneath his feet that now that she was here where she belonged, those things would be worked out. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew they would. And that was what faith was all about, wasn’t it? Knowing what you couldn’t explain? Believing in what you couldn’t see? He had a God who raised the dead, who called things that are not as though they were. Reality? It didn’t make any difference to Him. He made it and unmade it. The Savior could melt a hard heart just as easily as he could step through the walls of the upper room. And now Sam was back home, too, a fact of which his daughter was still unaware, a situation Carl had taken pains to preserve in case she decided to bolt.

  He had found out Sam was home even before Ricky had called and told him yesterday afternoon. It seemed that Sam had stopped at Fred Early’s grocery and gas out on the edge of town. He had bought two ham biscuits, a bottle of water, a cup of coffee, and a sailing magazine from Fred’s wife, Etta Jean, then stood there right in front of her and took what she thought were “nerve pills” because they looked just like the little white things that her sister Elda Rose had taken when she’d had that bad bout of fretting after her children had grown up and left home. So, of course, Etta Jean had called Elda Rose and told her Sam Truelove was home again, taking nerve pills, and that she’d heard all about that little girl on the news, and what do you suppose it all meant?

  Then Elda Rose, who served lunch down at the Cracker Barrel, had told Alice Mae Johnson, who was the lunch hostess, that Sam Truelove had come back, looking real bad and on medication. Alice Mae had simply mentioned it in passing to her best friend, Suellen Robertson, who also worked at the Cracker Barrel but was on temporary disability due to a disc she’d ruptured in her back when she’d had to serve the whole choir of Mt. Calvary Baptist church back in the banquet room and had tried to carry two trays instead of just one. She had come in for an appointment yesterday afternoon and had her usual chitchat with Carl’s lone employee, part-time receptionist and billing clerk, Margie Sue. Have you heard? she had asked, and Margie Sue said she hadn’t heard anything at all, and then Suellen had told her, head shaking, eyes full of concern, that Sam Truelove had had a complete nervous breakdown and was back home trying to put the pieces back together and after that was going to get a boat and sail around the world. So of course Margie Sue had come right into Carl’s office, bustling around with an armload of charts, but he could tell by her bright eyes and pursed lips that she had a morsel. “What is it?” he’d asked, gossipy as an old hen himself, never dreaming it was his son-in-law he’d be discussing.

  Carl prayed for him now as he threw out the last handful of corn to his chickens and watched them scatter and peck, clucking and chuckling. He smiled again, then went inside. His coffee was almost finished perking. Diane was always fussing that they should buy a drip coffeemaker, but he was used to his ways. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he would say, and she would shake her head and say he’d drink a little bit of ditchwater if it had enough cream and sugar in it. She was a good girl, Diane. Steady and calm with as good a heart as God ever put in a woman. A lot like his daughter, in fact. The percolator gave one last strangled sound that indicated his coffee was ready. He looked in the pantry and found a clean Mason pint jar, his favorite coffee cup. He poured it full of coffee, added his cream and sugar, plenty of each, picked up his Bible, then went outside to enjoy the fine morning.

  He sat in his rocker on the porch, read for a half hour or so, prayed awhile, then showered and dressed. It was barely seven when he left his house and drove up to the other one. Their house. Annie’s. And Sam’s.

  He had made it his habit to come here every so often. He walked around looking ruefully at the damage. The roses had died first. He hadn’t begun watering in time. The apple and plum trees were still alive, covered now with fruit, but it was stunted and wormy now that no one tended them. Most of the flowers had died, but he had managed to save one thing. He turned on the hose and went toward the balm of Gilead tree. He had given it to them himself as a wedding gift, and he wouldn’t give up on it even if they had. It had bloomed every year whether they were there to see it or not, every spring rewarding him with its pungent, aromatic fragrance when he would come to weed or water. It gave him comfort to know there was healing in its leaves and bark. He’d always thought it was a hopeful bush, homely but useful in its humble way. A reminder that you can’t judge things by the outside. That there were more possibilities than you know, reasons for hope, no matter what you might think.

  He stood there calmly watching the sun paint the orange dirt an even deeper coral as it rose higher, thinking about Sam and Annie Ruth as he aimed the hose at the base of the tree. He wasn’t sure if this was allowed. There were water restrictions, he knew. But he did not ask, and no one had confronted him. He had let the grass die last year, and already this year it was moving from green to gold. He hadn’t watered the apple or the plum trees, but this one thing he would keep alive. The water pooled up into a still, calm pond around its roots, and Carl knew the Lord had something planned. Knew He hadn’t brought the two of them this far to leave them now, and He wondered, asked the Lord, if there was something he could do to help. He didn’t get an answer. Sometimes the Lord let him wait on things a bit. Well, when the time was right, he would know, but he had a feeling he had a part to play, though he didn’t know just yet what it was. He set the hose down, went to the spigot and turned off the water, turned the handle hard to make sure it did not leak, then rolled up the hose and replaced it. He brushed the dirt off his hands and drove to the Waffle House. His steak and eggs awaited him.

  Nineteen

  The first thing Annie heard when she awoke was the baying of somebody’s hound. Then the frantic chirping of the starlings in the tree outside the window. Diane had put her in her old room. It had been redone, of course, furnished with antiques. Annie had to hand it to Diane, she liked the way it had turned out. The bed was covered with white chenille, the curtains sheer and billowing gently now with a slight breeze. It was sunny and hot again today, a definite change from what she was used to. Annie got up, unzipped her suitcase, and took out her clothes. She took a brief shower out of respect for their drought, dressed, then went downstairs.

  Diane was already up and gone. Annie went to the porch and could see her down in the hayfield. Probably deciding how to save next winter’s feed. She wondered how they were set for money, Papa and Diane. She wouldn’t be surprised if they lived close to the bone, for all the apparent prosperity. Papa had never been one to save. Diane was the frugal soul, but even so, finances must have been stretched thin by the expansion they’d done on their place. They had built a workshop for Diane’s wheels and looms, plus the office they’d built for Papa’s practice. And farming, especially as a hobby, was expensive. Throwing the drought into the equation would definitely produce negative numbers in the profit margin. Sheep were by no means a lucrative investment, and if you had to buy feed for them due to inadequate forage, they quickly became an expensive hobby. Annie went back inside, poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe, and looked around for cold cereal. She found none and finally ate her father’s untouched granola. Maybe that would spare him a scolding from Diane. She smiled thinking of Papa, then sobered when she remembered what she had come here to do.

  It was hard to take in the fact that she was here. Back in North Carolina, within shouting distance of Sam. It gave her an odd feeling to know he was so close. What would he say when she saw him again? What would he do?

  She could choose to not see him at all. Go back to Seattle, retrieve the truck, and drive on to Los Angeles, as she had planned. Let the attorneys do the talking and let him know she had been here only by her handiwork
, the house cleaned out, her goods dispatched. Him free to take or leave whatever he wanted. It was an attractive option, and she considered it seriously.

  She shook her head, closed her eyes, and steeled herself for the tasks ahead of her. She would do them. Quickly and resolutely. She would dispatch them in a day or so, have another day to visit with Papa and Diane, then return to Seattle and take up her life.

  She would go to the house this morning. She would call Mary and arrange a visit. She needed to see Ricky and Laurie, as well, for had they not been like brother and sister to her? And finally, she needed to ask about Sam. She could go no further than that, and she was once again tremendously grateful he was safely in Knoxville plying his trade.

  She went into the living room, turned on the television, and watched CNN for a few minutes, but there was no word of Kelly Bright. She found the newspaper in the living room, the first two sections scattered open. She scanned them quickly and found an article. No changes. Kelly’s second day without food and water. The president had urged action. The governor of Tennessee was meeting with legislators today. A bill was expected to be passed. Chances were good the tube would be replaced, and Annie didn’t know how to feel about that. She sat down, holding the paper in her hand, looking at the picture of the little girl taken before she had become the devastated patient at the center of today’s controversy.

  She never allowed herself to recall that day. She had relegated it to the locked basement of her memory, but pieces of it escaped now, as they had also done yesterday. She remembered that morning at breakfast. A Saturday morning in July, and Sam had been at home. An occurrence that had become rare since he’d accepted the position at the children’s hospital.