Missing Isaac

by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  “Who’s this?” he asked when he saw Pete.

  “Sit down, son,” Miss Paul said, pulling out a chair for him.

  He sat down next to his mother. “Who’s this?” he asked again.

  “He is Ned Ballard’s grandson,” she said.

  Pete felt he should offer his hand and a “pleased to meet you,” but since the only adults in the room were talking about him, not to him, he was at a loss for protocol.

  “This is Pete,” she went on. “Pete McLean.”

  “Mc—” He frowned a little and studied Pete like he was trying to decipher something on his face. “What’s he doin’ with Dovey?”

  “They have been keeping company this summer,” Miss Paul said.

  Dovey’s father was still staring at Pete, and though he said nothing, his expression had changed. Something about it, Pete thought, was kind of dangerous. John Pickett slowly stood up, but Miss Paul put a hand on his arm. He resisted for a moment but slowly sat back down, never taking his eyes off Pete.

  “John, there has been no wrongdoing. I have seen to that. Delphine has kept watch over them. Dovey was lonesome. And now Pete is her friend. He is a good boy, for a Ballard. They have been keeping this a secret because Dovey knew you would do what you just did. But I believe you are in the wrong. Pete, come here and pay your respects to Dovey’s father.”

  Pete walked over and extended his hand. His voice cracked a little as he said, “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

  John Pickett shook his trembling, sweaty hand. “Mama, I would never disrespect you, but I don’t know what you’re thinkin’. Dovey ain’t got no business keepin’ company with a boy. Besides that, we got no idea how that Reynolds man’s pickup ended up over here—a boy ain’t enough protection, roamin’ around these woods, till we find out what’s been goin’ on.”

  “And who would you have protect your daughter and keep her company?” Miss Paul asked.

  “Well . . . her family, her cousins—”

  “Her cousins are full grown and don’t give her the time of day. Her father and her uncles are busy in the fields. Her aunts are busy in the home. Do you mean for her to spend every waking minute alone in that house of yours without a single companion? She might be safe there, surrounded by family keeping watch, but she is not happy. You know good and well Lottie would never have wanted such a life for Dovey.”

  “It’s not fair bringin’ Lottie into this.” Pete could barely hear him, he said it so quietly.

  “Who ever told you life would be fair, John? Certainly not me.”

  “But she’s just a baby!” he cried.

  “No, John, she just turned thirteen,” Miss Paul said. “Did you remember to get her a present? Because this boy did.”

  Dovey’s father looked stunned, as if Miss Paul had thrown cold water in his face. And as he shifted his gaze to his daughter, he didn’t seem scary anymore—just terribly sad.

  Miss Paul put her hand on her son’s shoulder. “You haven’t really looked at your child in a very long time,” she said as gently as Pete had ever heard her speak to anybody.

  “That’s not true,” he said, closing his eyes as if to shut them all out.

  “Yes it is, Daddy,” Dovey said from across the room, and her father opened his eyes to look at her. She had begun to cry, not the wails of a child, but the silent tears of a weary soul worn out from fighting the hurt and ready at last to surrender to it. “It’s alright, though,” she continued in a steady voice as she walked toward him. “I know you can’t help it. I know I look like Mama, and that’s why it makes you sad to be with me, and you’re already feelin’ more sadness than you can stand. It’s alright if you need to look away. Don’t feel bad.”

  She put her arms around her father’s neck, and for the longest time he clung to her as if she were his only hope of staying afloat. When he finally let go, he had tears in his eyes just like Dovey.

  “But I don’t even know this boy,” he said when he could finally speak.

  “Then get to know him,” Miss Paul said. “Pete McLean, do you know your Bible?”

  “Not all of it, but—”

  “Do you know the story of Jacob and his wives?”

  Pete thought for a minute and was mighty relieved when the answer came to him. “Yes, ma’am! Jacob saw Rachel tendin’ to her lambs and thought she was real pretty. So he asked her daddy if he could marry her. But her daddy said Jacob would have to work seven years for her hand, which is what Jacob did. But then at the wedding, Rachel’s family tricked him and sent her older sister down the aisle underneath a veil. I can’t remember her name . . .”

  “Leah,” Miss Paul said.

  “Yes, ma’am, Leah. So Jacob got real mad because he wanted Rachel, and her daddy said he could marry her too, but only if he promised to work seven more years. And that’s what he did. He ended up workin’ fourteen years for Rachel’s daddy because he wanted to marry her so bad.”

  “And how long would you work for my granddaughter?” Miss Paul asked.

  Pete looked over at Dovey, who was wiping her blue-green eyes with the back of her hand. He thought about Miss Paul’s question long and hard, but when he spoke, he was sure of his answer. “As long as it takes,” he said.

  Twelve

  AUGUST 1, 1965

  Pete was so excited he could barely breathe. Back in the fall, he would not have been surprised if Miss Paul had told him he had to work the Picketts’ cotton for fourteen years before he could take Dovey to an all-day singing at his church, but he only had to work one summer. He had been farming with her family three days a week since he got out of school—that was all his mother would allow—and somewhere along the way, Dovey’s father had apparently decided that he might not kill Pete after all.

  Daddy Ballard had paved the way with Pete’s mother, who said she still wasn’t sure how she felt about all this. While she reminded Pete almost every day that he was far too young to get serious about any girl, she was clearly fond of Dovey. She would allow Pete to work with the Picketts as long as they swore on a stack of Bibles that they would not put him on any tractor that might end up in a sinkhole.

  Daddy Ballard would be driving Pete and Dovey to the church today because Pete’s mother was going to the singing with Mr. Garland Harris. Pete remembered how anxious she had looked when she first told him that the nice man who bought the cotton gin had taken her to the Boat Dock restaurant on the Coosa River and wondered if they might see each other again. But by then, Pete knew a thing or two about loneliness. So he had told his mother that if Mr. Harris made her happy, he was all for it.

  Mr. Harris looked older than Pete’s mother—and nothing like Pete’s father. He was medium height with blond hair, which was always neatly trimmed and smoothed back with hair tonic. He had a kind smile and a quiet manner. Pete had never seen him wear anything but a suit and wondered if he even owned a fishing rod. Even so, he did his best to like Mr. Harris.

  Pete ran a comb through his hair, which seemed to grow a shade darker and, mercifully, a little smoother every year. He couldn’t believe he was actually getting ready to take Dovey to First Baptist with him. It wasn’t just the concerns of their families that had to be overcome. Dovey herself was the real obstacle. She had rarely been out of the hollow and was scared to death of being surrounded by strangers. Somehow he had managed to lure her with the promise of music—and not just the usual fare, but traveling quartet singers with guitars and fiddles and everything.

  He had convinced her that if she would just work up enough courage to visit his church once, she would never be scared to go again. And in his experience, it was always good when you could cross something off the list of stuff you’re scared of. For example, he wasn’t scared of Miss Paul anymore. He didn’t even get a knot in his stomach when she quizzed him about the Bible to make sure he was still a Christian.

  Sometimes Pete had the urge to hide Dovey away so nobody could steal her from him. But that wouldn’t be right. Dovey deserved to be seen. And sh
e deserved to see his world, even if she decided in the end that she didn’t want to be part of it.

  At the blare of Daddy Ballard’s Cadillac horn, Pete checked himself over in the mirror. He had grown nearly a foot in the past year and was almost as tall as Dovey’s father. Working the fields had tanned his skin, and he was thrilled to have the beginnings of real muscles. Even so, he still had that lanky look of young teenage boys whose arms seemed to grow faster than everything else. He was wearing his navy blue Sunday suit, a white dress shirt, and a tie his mother had picked out.

  Daddy Ballard blew the Cadillac horn again. Time to go.

  Dovey had no idea what to expect from church people, but she was willing to take a risk to hear the music Pete had told her about—and to make him happy. Her Aunt Lydia had made her a sundress of pale pink eyelet. It was simple, with a square neck (“nothing too low,” Aunt Lydia had assured Granny Paul), wide straps, an A-line skirt, and a white sash at the waist. Dovey had grown taller, and she was “starting to fill out,” according to Aunt Ruby, who embarrassed the daylights out of her when she talked like that. Her father had bought her a pair of white patent-leather shoes. She wore Pete’s locket, like always, and barrettes with tiny silk flowers on them—a present from Aunt Aleene. From her open bedroom window, Dovey heard a car out front, then footsteps on the porch.

  “Morning, John.”

  “Mr. Ballard.”

  Dovey imagined the two men were shaking hands. The screen door made its familiar whap as they came inside. It was strange to think of Pete’s grandfather right here in her house, just a few feet away from her bedroom. He was probably used to much bigger houses.

  She heard her father calling, “Dovey, honey, don’t keep Mr. Ballard waiting.”

  As she came into the small front room, she was thrilled to see the look on Pete’s face. He had never seen her in a dress before.

  “Hey,” he said with a smile.

  “Hey,” Dovey answered. On the creek bank together, they talked about anything and everything, but here in Dovey’s house, with adults scrutinizing them, they didn’t know what to say.

  “John, these Baptist singings can go on for a while, especially if they decide to throw in a long-winded preacher, which they generally do,” Pete’s grandfather was saying. “Prob’ly won’t be over till about three o’clock, but if you need Dovey home before then, we’ll leave as early as you want us to.”

  “’Preciate that. It’s alright if she stays, long as she’s happy, if you get my meaning?”

  “I do. We’ll let Dovey decide then. The minute she wants to come home, why, we’ll get her here. But it shouldn’t be any later than three thirty.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “Alright, you two, your chauffeur’s not gettin’ any younger,” Pete’s grandfather said. “Let’s get ourselves to the meetin’ house.”

  “Bye, Daddy,” Dovey said, hugging her father.

  “Bye, baby,” he said and kissed her on the forehead. “You have a good time. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  ———

  John watched from the porch as a rich man’s Cadillac carried his daughter out of the hollow. When he came back inside, he paused for a moment in the doorway of Dovey’s room. It was changing so fast. No more paper dolls and coloring books. His baby girl’s childhood was almost over. He went into the bedroom he had shared with Lottie, switched on the small lamp on the dresser, and ran a finger over her hairbrush, still in the same spot where she’d always kept it.

  Gazing at his own desolate reflection in the mirror, he had to wonder—was that how he looked to Dovey? Had he looked that way since Lottie died? John knew he had become a stranger to his daughter—in some ways, a stranger to himself. He turned the brush over in his hands one last time before slipping it into a dresser drawer and turning off the lamp.

  By the time Daddy Ballard parked his Cadillac at First Baptist, the churchyard was a beehive of women scurrying back and forth between their cars and the fellowship hall, their arms laden with Tupperware, casserole dishes, cake plates, and gallon jugs filled with sweet tea.

  Dovey’s eyes were as wide as saucers. Pete guessed she had never seen such a sight—or heard such a commotion as the women called out to each other:

  “Vonelle, is that a cobbler, I hope? I waked up in the middle of the night just worried to death we was gonna run low on desserts.”

  “Did anybody remember to slice us some lemons for the tea?”

  “Where’s Inez with that electric knife? If she’s come off without it, I’m gonna throw myself in the Coosa River.”

  “Now, honey, don’t you give that pie crust another thought. Ever’body has one go a little gummy now and then. Just rip off that masking tape with your name on it and nobody’ll ever know that plate’s yours.”

  Dovey stopped in front of the church and looked up at the steeple. “It’s so beautiful, like it’s pointing the way to heaven.”

  Pete smiled. “In a way, I guess it kinda is.” He opened the church door for her and watched her take it all in.

  “It’s just so . . . beautiful,” she said again. “What’s up there?” She pointed to a tall, rectangular opening behind the choir loft.

  “That’s the baptistery—you know, where we baptize people.”

  “You mean there’s water back there?”

  “Not right now, but there’s a pool back there that we can fill up when we’re baptizing.”

  “Granny Paul baptizes all of us in the river,” she said.

  “Ever’body used to do it that way,” Pete said. “Daddy Ballard was baptized in the river. I think that’d be pretty neat.”

  “Were you baptized in that pool?”

  “When I was nine.”

  “And what’s that over there?”

  “Tell you what,” Pete said. “Let’s get out of the middle of this aisle so we don’t block traffic, and I’ll explain anything you want me to.”

  From their pew about midway down, he pointed out the piano and the organ, the choir loft, the communion table and the offering plates, the American flag and the Christian flag.

  Something else had caught Dovey’s attention. “Up there on that sky-blue wall behind the baptistery—that pretty bird—is that . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a dove.”

  She smiled and settled back into their pew like she suddenly felt right at home. He had taken the seat on the aisle, with Dovey sitting next to him so he could show her what to do if anybody came up and wanted to share their pew. “Now, Dovey, the church’ll likely fill up, and some folks might come up and want to sit on the other side of you. The way it works is, I stand up and step out into the aisle, and you stay sittin’ down but tuck your feet way up under the pew so they can get by.”

  “Like this?” she asked, doing a practice tuck.

  “That’s perfect,” Pete said.

  Sure enough, not five minutes later some visitors from another church came up and wanted a seat. Pete stepped into the aisle, Dovey tucked her feet, and a lady sat down on the other side of her and said, “Why, what nice manners you have.” Dovey looked like she had died and gone to heaven.

  Miss Beulah came in and took her seat at the organ. “Brace yourself,” Pete whispered. As usual, Miss Beulah had the volume pedal all the way to the floor when she opened up with her prelude, “Brethren, We Have Met to Worship.” A couple of visitors sitting in front of Pete and Dovey visibly jumped.

  Pete’s Aunt Geneva came into the sanctuary and got herself situated at the piano on the opposite side of the choir loft from Miss Beulah, and then Brother Jip came in and took his seat behind the pulpit. Next came Brother Alvin Lackey, the song leader, followed by the choir. They were wearing their burgundy robes, which they had never been able to do at the August singing because it was too hot, but the church was air-conditioned now, so the robes were sort of a salute to progress.

  With the choir in place, Brother Alvin opened his hymnal on a music stand facing them an
d gave Aunt Geneva a nod for the intro. The choir began to sing.

  When we all get to heaven,

  What a day of rejoicing that will be.

  When we all see Jesus,

  We’ll sing and shout the vic-tor-y!

  As Brother Alvin motioned for the choir to sit down, Brother Jip walked briskly to the pulpit. The preacher was about five feet ten and built like a tree stump, with pudgy cheeks and a toothy smile. He was clean-shaven and wore his brown hair combed straight back into a pompadour smoothed down with Brylcreem. Everybody liked him, though Pete’s mother thought he went too heavy on the Old Spice and “could be a little much sometimes.” Even so, this was her church and he was her pastor, so she did her best to overlook his shortcomings.

  “Aw, that was some fine singing, choir!” Brother Jip exclaimed, gripping the podium on both sides. “And all the people said?”

  “Amen!” the congregation responded.

  “Aw, you can do better than that!” Brother Jip said. “And all the people said?”

  “Amen!” the congregation roared.

  “Aw, praise God. Thank you, Brother Alvin and choir, for that wonderful call to worship. What a glorious message in song. ‘When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be!’ Amen?”

  “Amen!” the congregation answered.

  “We are so blessed to have a houseful of visitors today, and all of us here at First Baptist Church of Glory just want you to feel welcome and right at home. I am Brother Jip Beaugard, the pastor. My goodness! I see folks out in the congregation from Mt. Zion, Mt. Pisgah, Mt. Olive, Highway 9 Full Gospel . . . Why, somebody even let Brother Leon Sparks and his Methodist flock in!”