A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  Is this how You are, God? Leaving me helpless? Setting this up to fail?

  A 1932 Ford Tudor Sedan, with pearl ghost flames on its side and wide rodder wheels, revved its engine as it approached the reviewing stand. Behind it came a shiny black 1966 El Camino and a gleaming 1949 Mercury, chopped and shaved, with a Desoto grill. But David didn’t notice any of the polished front ends or the engineered chassis or the Flowmaster exhausts.

  The parade marched past him in a jumble of hazy color, and all he could see was his pain.

  Samantha Roche lowered her backpack to the ground with an exhausted sigh. She dropped it on the grass and stared at it. It wasn’t all that heavy, but carrying it exhausted her. She got tired all the time now, for the smallest of things, and she knew it was because of the leukemia. It made her mad. One minute she’d be fine, and the next she’d feel like she couldn’t stand up.

  All she wanted to do this moment was sleep.

  A man walked by with a bouquet of tiny American flags in his hand, and extracted one for her. “Here, little lady. You look like you could use something to wave.”

  “Oh.” She took it from him. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Its fabric was thin as parchment; she could see light through from the other side. She held it in front of her face, a limp, gauzy curl that she ought to have been pleased to have.

  Only, she wasn’t pleased.

  She was too tired and too uncertain and too alone to be pleased.

  Sam thought of her mother, sixteen hours away and not knowing where she was. She wondered if anybody besides her mom might be looking for her. She thought of Camp Plentycoos where her counselor, Katherine Tibay, had said every morning, “Make it a great day or not. The choice is yours.”

  She leaned her head against the tree trunk, closed her eyes, and felt with her fingers for the precious letter she carried there, from David Treasure.

  She loved even the sound of his name.

  Beside her on the grass, a father rocked backward with his baby in both hands, holding it aloft while he laid flat on the grass. He tickled the baby’s belly with the top of his fuzzy hat, the baby’s arms and legs flailing in midair with joy.

  Over by the fence, a boy had just dropped chili dog down the front of his Jackson Hole T-shirt, and his dad was spit-shining his chin with a hanky.

  Across the way, a dad and daughter opened the packaging on a plastic quiver of arrows and aligned one on a little plastic bow. Samantha watched as the dad showed the daughter how to cock her elbow and draw back the bow, shutting one eye and squinting down her nose to sight it.

  Her whole life, as long as she’d been old enough to understand, Sam had never thought anything like that could happen to her. Having a dad to tickle her or to sight an arrow with her or to help fix things when she made a mistake.

  All she wanted to do was to find him.

  All she wanted was to say, “I’m glad you wanted to see me because I wanted to see you, too.”

  Samantha felt a little better now, after stopping to rest. She decided she’d better get up and walk more, because walking helped her think.

  She didn’t know what to do, being eight years old, when you needed to sleep over for the night and you didn’t have a place to stay.

  She wandered. And looked at faces, to see if anybody looked like somebody she knew. But nobody did, and everybody was busy with their own families, as they skittered around or stepped in front of her and made her jog sideways to get out of the way.

  Just when she thought she needed to sit down again, she came to a huge crowd lining a road. Just as she stood on tiptoe to see what was happening, a stranger approached, two huge hands extended toward her. She looked behind her, because she didn’t think he’d be talking to her.

  There wasn’t anybody behind her.

  “Just who I’m looking for,” the man said.

  “I… what? Me?”

  “Yeah. A pretty little girl with a flag.”

  Her hopes skyrocketed. “Are you Mr. Treasure?” she asked, because her mom had taught her never to call grownups by their first names.

  “No. That isn’t me.”

  “Oh. I was just hoping—” She decided she ought not say any more.

  “Are your parents here watching the parade?”

  “Yes.” Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie because her dad could be around. “They’re here.” She pointed into the crowd at nobody. “Right over there.”

  “I’m out scouting for extra kids. We’ve got a big float coming up and we’ll score better from the judges if we have a whole passel of people hanging from the sides, waving at everybody.”

  “Really?”

  “How’d you like to take a ride in a parade?”

  “I don’t—”

  He eyed the hoard of people where she’d gestured, maybe trying to figure out to which parents she belonged. “C’mon. We need you. If they’ll give you permission, there’s barbecue at the end of the run. Good food, too. Catered by Bubba’s.”

  “I don’t know what they’d say.”

  “Well, ask them. Tell them I’m Lester Howard, director of the community band, and they can pick you up at the rodeo grounds in an hour. That’s when we’ll be done.”

  Five other kids came jumping up and raising their hands to volunteer. Because he wasn’t watching, she had her chance. She waited the right amount of time, disappeared into the milling people for three seconds, and came back to touch his wristwatch.

  “They said it’s okay,” she lied to him, her voice gone soft and careful. “They said they’d pick me up later, where you said.”

  “Good. That’s settled. What’s your name?”

  “Sam.”

  With no further ado, his huge hands wrapped around her. He lofted Samantha so high over the side of the wagon, she felt like she was flying. Next thing she knew, she was sitting on a bale of hay with a man playing a tuba right beside her head.

  “Thanks for helping us out!” Lester Howard waved them off. “Oh, wait.” Out of his pockets he pulled fistfuls of hard candy and piled it into her hands. “Throw lots of candy when you see other kids! That’s the way to be the most popular float in the parade.”

  “You aren’t marking your score sheet.” Edna Clements, who was sitting next to David on the grandstand, elbowed him and directed his attention to the papers in his lap. “How can you pick a winner if you aren’t giving them any points?” The muscles of Edna’s mouth were stiff with reproach.

  “I don’t need to mark them,” David said, feeling ashamed. “I can remember it in my head.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think that float from the Jackson Hole Playhouse was best? Don’t you think it should be given the award?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the player piano on it.”

  “Oh. I don’t remember that one.”

  Edna settled back in her seat, her face gone slack now that she’d proven her point. “That’s exactly what I thought.” She crossed her arms with pride in her lap.

  David struggled to focus on the task at hand. Directly in front of them this moment paraded Deanna Banana the clown, with her big painted grin, her beautiful dark eyes and her rainbow striped hair. She walked along in long, slappy shoes, tying balloon animals without even having to watch her own hands. Whenever she finished one, she handed it out. Behind her a dog-sled team, made up of eight yipping huskies with red felt stockings on their paws, mushed against their harnesses and yanked a Volkswagen along.

  “I like that one,” David said smugly to Edna. “I think it should win.”

  “You think so? That one?”

  “Yes.”

  “All it is, is a bunch of dogs pulling a car. That’s their job. Those dogs run in Alaska in the Iditarod. No effort put forth to decorate the car or make anything festive.”

  “I like them, Edna. They’re impressive.”

  But even as he argued halfheartedly with Edna Clements, the sight in th
e street sent David reeling deeper into his uncertainty. Perhaps it was the sight of those huskies barking and straining against their fitments. All their combined effort as they followed a master’s command, and all it got them was another few inches up the road.

  Over and over the dogs gathered their strength and struggled forward. Over and over they surged and rested, surged again.

  David saw himself in them, the way he’d made such effort to pull himself ahead of what he’d done, to drag himself away from the wrongfulness that had for years held him back and weighted his soul. The same way that Volkswagen held back those huskies.

  Lord.

  Ridiculous. A grown man talking in his head to thin air. Who had he been following all these years? A figment of everybody’s imagination. Something that Nelson and the men on the presbytery committee and his own parents had said would change his life.

  Well, it hadn’t.

  How is it that everything everybody else seems to do with You works, Lord, and every time I try to listen to You, something else falls apart?

  This moment, as he sat in a chair with his tie bound like a hangman’s noose around his neck, watching a parade going by, his faith made him feel like an outsider looking in, wiping the fog from the window, seeing everyone else inside without him.

  His final shred of hope and purpose, that Braden might have been able to save Samantha, gone. Gone. With Susan’s latest phone call, even that remaining shred had been ripped away.

  He felt so entirely isolated from God this moment that all his years of belief might have been a game.

  I don’t want something in my life that’s empty. I don’t want this, if I’ve only been wasting my time. I don’t know if anybody really hears You, Lord, even when they say they do.

  Up Broadway rolled one of the old standbys of the parade, gleaming green trucks from the Teton County Volunteer Fire Department, lights pulsing red and blue. The firemen aimed their giant water hoses skyward, and streams of water arced and rained down on the hapless people below. Behind that, still in the distance, David heard the beginning strains of the sparse but zealous Jackson Hole Community Band.

  The band float was in sight by now and, behind it, the town street sweepers. The massive round brushes revolved on the pavement, with a light hiss of water, cleaning up the dropped remnants of horses and mules.

  “That’s the one I’m pushing for.” He elbowed Edna. “The street sweepers get my vote every year.”

  The Jackson Hole Community Band passed before them, its brassy music making people extend their arms, jump sideways, and cheer along the curb. On the rear fender, two children held spinning disco balls high, the reflection of the July sun flickering over the bystanders with light.

  I am light, Beloved. In Me, there is no darkness at all.

  But, Lord. There is darkness all around me.

  The lone tuba oom-pahed while children from the wagon threw fistfuls of candy onto the street.

  “Oh, the community band isn’t getting my vote this year,” Edna commented beside him. “I hate this song so much, if they played it at my funeral I would stand up and walk out.”

  David turned away from the float and shot his neighbor a wide grin. “Edna, I doubt seriously that anyone would ever play ‘The Macarena’ at a funeral.”

  “With all the new people who keep moving into this town, you never know.”

  David’s attention fell to his knees. He tamped his float ballots there, fingered his pen, and made several notations. It was high time he made some decision about the parade. “I want those huskies. They’re really good.”

  I am good, Beloved. My love endures forever. I am faithful through all generations.

  Oh, Lord. Are You? Are You?

  If you can bring good from this, Father, what could You have done with me if only I had remained faithful?

  David wrote two words before he laid down his pen and looked up. Directly in front of him, an eight-year-old girl with long brown hair flying over her shoulders shyly tossed a Tootsie Roll to a tiny girl holding her father’s hand on the sidelines. Because the child on the sidelines was too little and the parade too big and the girl on the float hadn’t thrown the candy quite far enough, the father dashed out, retrieved it, and handed it over.

  The girl on the float grinned with pleasure, revealing a dimple beside the left corner of her mouth and a teasing jut of her chin.

  My, but she looked like…

  David’s heart leapt as high as the knot in his necktie. He felt as if his breath would never come again.

  The child on the float—the exact image on a poster that Braden and his friends had tacked on every telephone pole and every fence in town.

  She was the exact likeness of the small school picture that had tormented him ever since Susan had opened her wallet and let him see it.

  David stumbled up from his chair; his parade ballots scattered into Edna’s lap and he didn’t even notice. He tried to get around the man in the folding chair one step down from him, but it couldn’t be done. He moved sideways, crashing into John Teasley, who threw an arm sideways to keep himself from being pushed off the side of the reviewing stand.

  David didn’t notice. “Sam.” Frantically, he tried the name on for size as she passed directly below him. “Sam.” The band crescendoed below him. When the child didn’t respond, he yelled louder. Louder, still. “Samantha!”

  She turned toward the sound of her name. He saw her eyes searching, full on. And, he knew.

  Every doubt in David Treasure’s mind fled at that moment.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized to the man in front of him who was right in his way. He fumbled and kicked and pushed, trying to get around. “I’ve got to get down from here,” he said to John Teasley as he shoved the man’s metal chair aside.

  “You’re knocking me off, David. Can’t you wait until the end of the parade?”

  “No, I can’t.” He almost shouted it in his frustration. “I’ve got to get down to the band.”

  Sideways he went, and a chair clattered to the ground. Three steps forward, between two people where there wasn’t any room. As a final resort, he climbed over the top of somebody’s head.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” A policeman on horseback cut him off. “The street sweepers are coming. No one is allowed in the road during the parade.”

  “But that’s my… that’s my…” David couldn’t get it out; he was breathless from fighting his way through people and chairs. “That little girl is lost,” he gasped. “She’s my daughter.”

  The officer followed David’s desperate gesture. He brought his horse around, and stared, peering from below his hat brim. “She’s that one, isn’t she?” he asked. “The one that’s all over town in all the pictures.”

  “Yes.”

  The officer reined in his mount. “Don’t let me hold you up. I’ll help if you’d like. Me and this horse, we can stop that float. You’d better not let that young lady out of your sight.”

  David ran, catching up, falling back, catching up again, until he reached with his hand and seized the lip of the wagon. By that time, the officer had drawn to the front and the horses were slowing. David passed the pounding bass drum. He passed the trio of uplifted trumpets and the lady who tooted her piccolo.

  “Sam?” he cried, gasping out her name before he’d quite gotten to her. His sweat-stained shirt had come untucked. The shoulders of his sport coat had worked their way down to his forearms as he ran. His necktie flew to one side like a sail.

  She looked at him.

  “Samantha?”

  She’d been doling out candies to the littlest kids along the route, who looked like they weren’t big enough to get much, and wanted it most. The candy scattered to the ground when she heard him calling her name. Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Ranchers and Atomic Fireballs bounced on the pavement like pearls, crunching to pieces beneath the wagon wheels.

  “Is it you?” she whispered. “David Treasure?” He could read her lips even though the music pla
yed too loud for either of them to hear.

  “Are you Samantha Roche?”

  She nodded.

  With no hesitation, he lifted his arms up for her. “With all due respect,” he said with a good amount of reverence in his voice, “I think you’re somebody I know.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Oh, what it felt like for David to embrace his newfound daughter. He’d wanted to hold her like this, he knew it now, from the very first minute he’d known she was alive. It was a moment of wonder for him, more poignant to David because it was something he might never have known.

  He felt himself when he held her.

  He felt his own mother in her, and his grandmother, and the women his grandmother had known when she had been a girl, gone before. She smelled like chocolate and Atomic Fireballs and dust when she leaned close to his ear. “I was afraid,” she told him. “Do you think I should be?”

  He held her out a bit, his heart aching, thinking of all she had to be afraid of in her future. “Afraid about what?” he asked.

  “Afraid of having you know me. Because you might not think I’m the way you wanted me to be.” He examined her face. They just don’t make them much cuter than this, he thought. She did look like Braden.

  One beat passed, two, three, before David could answer her question. He’d lost everything that was solid and stable in his life, for this. Miraculously, being with his daughter now, it seemed worth that much. “So far, you’re exactly the way I thought you’d be.”

  “Yeah?”

  She cocked her head sideways at him like a puppy, and he spoke with an amazing feeling of possessiveness in his chest. “When someone is your father,” he said, “he doesn’t love you because he’s gotten to know you. He loves you because he’s your father—because you belong to him, no matter who you are.”

  For a long time she didn’t move. She only looked at him with quiet reverence. “You really think so?”