Just Shy of Harmony

by Philip Gulley

  The phone rang through the screen door, an intrusion of noise. He hurried inside and picked it up. He could hear slight weeping on the other end.

  “Hello,” Wayne said. “Hello, who is this?”

  “It’s me, Wayne. Sally. Your wife. I want to come home. I want to be with you and the kids. I want us to be a family again. I’m so sorry. Will you take me back?”

  Eight

  The Jackpot

  It never pays to ask if things can get worse, Jessie Peacock told herself on the way home from church.

  It was the first Sunday in August. Asa was working overtime at the poultry plant, so she’d gone to church by herself. Vernley Stout, the bank president, had stopped Jessie on the steps outside the meetinghouse.

  “Jessie, I’ve done all I can, but the board’s leaning on me pretty heavy. If you don’t pay off last year’s note, they’re gonna put a lien against your farm. They want two thousand dollars by Friday.”

  Jessie lay awake all that night, wondering how to get the money. The only thing she had of any worth was her grandmother’s quilts. Her mother had given them to Jessie just before she’d died. Ten hand-stitched quilts. She’d made Jessie promise to keep them in the family.

  The next morning Jessie told Asa she needed the truck to visit her cousin. While he was working on the barn, she carried the quilts to the truck, drove to an antique store in the city, and sold them for two thousand dollars. Then she went to the bank and gave Vernley Stout the money.

  “I’m glad you got the money,” he told her. “I’m sorry I had to hurry you along, but I couldn’t put off the board any longer.”

  “I don’t blame you. You’re just doing your job.”

  Vernley paused, then said, “Jessie, I’m not aiming to badger you, but you and Asa haven’t put anything toward this year’s note. Are you going to be able to pay that off when it comes due this fall? Tell me now, so I can maybe hold off the board.”

  “I don’t know, Vernley, what with this drought and all. Asa’s been working overtime at the poultry plant. We hope to have the money, but I can’t say for sure.”

  The next day a registered letter from the state lottery office came just as Jessie was making lunch. Their mailman, Clarence, brought it to the back screen door and waited while Jessie signed for it. Clarence was curious about the envelope and hoped Jessie would open it while he was there, but she didn’t. She thanked him, then closed the screen door, and sat at the kitchen table.

  She opened the envelope and read:

  This is to notify you that your winning lottery ticket will expire on August 23. If you do not accept your winnings by that date, you will forfeit any and all claims to the money.

  There was a number to call at the bottom of the page.

  Jessie thought about the note coming due. She rose from her chair and walked to the phone next to the refrigerator. She dialed the number. The phone rang and rang. Just as someone picked it up and said “State lottery office,” she heard Asa crunching up the gravel lane in their truck.

  “Oh, I must have misdialed. I’m sorry,” Jessie said, and hung up the phone. She hid the letter underneath her mother’s punch bowl on top of the refrigerator.

  She and Asa ate baloney sandwiches at the kitchen table. They’d been eating a lot of baloney sandwiches lately.

  He finished his lunch and went outside to work on the barn. Their Amish neighbor, Erven Schwartz, was helping Asa.

  Jessie waited until she could hear their hammering, then picked up the phone and dialed the state lottery office. A woman answered the phone on the second ring.

  Jessie told her her name.

  “Say, I know you,” the woman said. “You’re the lady who turned down the money?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’ll be wanting that money after all.” Jessie told her all that had happened, about the drought and their barn burning and the note coming due. She even told about selling her grandmother’s quilts. She began to cry as she thought of the quilts. She felt stupid, crying to a stranger on the phone.

  “Honey, maybe this is the Lord’s way of helping you.”

  Jessie sniffed. “You think so?”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t think you should feel bad at all.”

  “What do I need to do to get the money?”

  She heard the woman striking the keys on her computer.

  “Well, honey, we can send you a little over twenty thousand dollars a month for the next twenty years or you can take a lump sum payment of three and a half million dollars. What do you want to do?”

  The numbers staggered Jessie. She reached in her purse, pulled out a nickel, and tossed it in the air.

  Heads.

  “I’ll take the three and a half million.”

  “It’ll take a few days. We have to process the check, then send it registered mail. You’ll have it in two or three days, honey.”

  Clarence came that Friday just before lunch. Two registered letters in the space of a week. He was beside himself with curiosity.

  “How are you, Clarence?”

  “Oh, same old same old. How about you? Anything interesting happening?”

  Jessie looked at the envelope. It was bowed out from where Clarence had looked through the little window to see what was inside.

  “Nothing much happening here,” she told him. “But if something does come up, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  She closed the door, sat down at the kitchen table, opened the envelope, and pulled out the check.

  Pay to the order of Jessie Peacock, it read. $3,500,000.

  Then, on the line below that, Three million, five hundred thousand dollars and no cents.

  She heard Asa’s truck come up the lane, crunching the gravel. She put the check back in the envelope and hid it on top of the refrigerator under her mother’s punch bowl.

  They ate their lunch, then did their work. That evening she made Spam kabobs, Asa’s favorite dinner.

  “Wow! Spam kabobs! What’s the occasion?” he asked.

  “No certain reason. I just wanted to make them for you.”

  It was Asa’s night off from the poultry plant, so they washed the dishes together, standing at the sink, looking out the window. Then they sat on the porch. They could hear the frogs down at the creek.

  Asa was quiet.

  “What are you thinking, honey?” Jessie asked.

  “I was just thinking to myself how many times I’ve sat on this porch worrying about my problems, and now I can’t even remember most of what I worried about. The Lord sure has taken good care of us—providing me that job just when we needed the money, having Erven help me with the barn. The Lord sure has taken good care of us.”

  “He certainly has.” Jessie thought of the check in the kitchen underneath her mother’s punch bowl. Her thirty pieces of silver.

  She wanted to tell him about the money, but was too ashamed. He’d been so proud of her when she’d turned down the money. She wondered if she could spend the money without Asa’s knowing it. Maybe put it in the bank in the next town over and draw out a little at a time. Just enough to pay the bills.

  She was wondering about that when Asa stood up and said, “Let’s turn on the news and see what’s going on in the world.”

  He pushed open the wooden screen door, walked into the front room, and arranged himself in his recliner. Jessie sat next to him in her chair.

  He turned on Channel 5, just in time to hear the anchorman say, “A local woman is three and a half million dollars richer today. We’ll tell you more after this commercial break.”

  “Wow,” Asa said. “Think of that. Three and a half million dollars. Of course, all the money in the world won’t bring a man peace of mind.”

  Jessie stood up and said, “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” He turned off the television set.

  “The chickens. I think I hear the chickens. I wonder if there’s a fox in the chicken coop again?”

  Asa bolted from his chair and ran out the kitch
en door toward the coop.

  Jessie hurried behind the television, unplugged the antenna, then went outside.

  “Is everything all right?” she yelled from the porch.

  “A-okay!” Asa yelled back from the coop.

  They returned to the house. Asa settled back in his chair and pushed the ON button. The television was snowy white.

  “Now what’s the matter?” he said.

  “I think it’s broken. It’s been acting up lately.”

  “Rats! I wanted to see who won all that money.”

  “Probably no one we know.”

  The phone rang in the kitchen.

  “Now who’d be calling this late at night?” Asa wondered aloud.

  Jessie hurried to answer it. It was Dale Hinshaw.

  “Say, Jessie, they was just talking about you on the TV. I thought you’d turned that money down. Speaking of money, I’d like to talk with you about my Scripture egg project. I just felt the Lord leading me to ask if you want to donate a little something toward it. Can I stop by your house tomorrow morning?”

  “I can’t talk now,” Jessie said, and hung up the phone. She took the phone off the hook and placed it on the counter.

  “Who was that?” Asa called from the front room.

  “A man selling aluminum siding.”

  It was late. They went upstairs and got ready for bed. By the time Jessie worked up her courage to tell Asa about the money, he was almost asleep. She said in a quiet voice, “Asa?”

  It was dark in their bedroom. She could feel him shift toward her.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve done something I need to tell you about.”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Remember those letters we’ve been getting from the lottery people?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I called them up and talked with the nicest lady. And, well, I just got to thinking how this might be the Lord’s way of taking care of us and, well, I went ahead and took the money.”

  Asa came wide awake. He sat up and turned on the lamp beside their bed.

  “We have five million dollars?”

  “Actually, only three and a half million. I picked the instant payment over the twenty-year payout.”

  “When do we get the money?”

  “The check came today. It’s downstairs.”

  “Can I see it?”

  They climbed from the bed, pulled their robes from the bedposts, and walked down the stairs.

  Jessie reached up under the punch bowl and pulled the check out. They sat at the kitchen table, across from one another.

  Asa peered at the check. He held it up to the light. “It looks real,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s real. Clarence brought it in the registered mail.”

  “It makes me kind of nervous, having all this money in the house.” He walked over to the kitchen door and locked it.

  “Let’s take it to the bank first thing in the morning,” Jessie said.

  “Does that mean we’re going to keep it?”

  Jessie grew quiet, then reached across the table and took his hand.

  “Asa, don’t take this wrong—you’ve taken good care of me over the years. But lately it’s been kind of tough. It’s wearing me out. Maybe if we could just pay off our bills and set aside some money for when we get old, we could give the rest away. Maybe give it to the church or something.”

  “I’ve been trying my best to keep our heads above water.”

  “I’m not blaming you. The pigs died, and we’ve had this drought. It couldn’t be helped. But now we can get ahead. We can finish that new barn and buy some more livestock and pay off our debt.” She didn’t tell him about selling her grandmother’s quilts.

  “Maybe this is the Lord’s way of taking care of us,” Asa agreed. “We’ve been praying for help. Maybe this is the answer.”

  They put the check back underneath the punch bowl and went upstairs to bed.

  Asa pulled Jessie close. “I’ve never slept with a millionaire before,” he said. She laughed. It was music to him. She hadn’t laughed in a long time.

  “You know,” Asa said, “if we did keep it, we could do some real good with this money. We could help a lot of people.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

  They woke up next morning, ate breakfast, and went to the bank. Vernley Stout waved as they walked through the doors.

  “They talked about you last night on the television,” he said to Jessie. “I think I know why you’re here.”

  “We want to pay off the notes,” Asa said.

  “Well, you just have the one now.”

  “I don’t think so. I believe we still owe two thousand dollars on last year’s note.”

  Vernley Stout looked at Jessie, perplexed.

  Jessie began to weep. “I paid it off. I sold my grandmother’s quilts while you were at work one day. They were gonna put a lien against us. I had to do it.”

  Vernley said, “It couldn’t be helped, Asa. I tried to talk the board out of it, but they wouldn’t listen. They wanted their money.”

  “Your grandmother’s quilts?” Asa asked Jessie. “The ones your mother gave you?”

  Jessie sniffed and nodded.

  They deposited the check and paid off the note. Then Asa drew out four thousand dollars in cash.

  “What’s that for?” Jessie asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  They climbed into the truck. Asa turned to Jessie. “Who’d you sell the quilts to?”

  She told him. He eased the truck into gear and drove toward the city. Two hours later they pulled up to the shop and went inside.

  Jessie’s quilts were displayed throughout the shop. Asa counted nine.

  “My wife sold you ten quilts. What happened to the other one?” he asked the lady behind the counter.

  “I sold the wedding ring quilt.”

  That had been the oldest quilt, given to Jessie’s grandmother on her wedding day. Jessie blinked back tears.

  “I’d like to buy all the quilts,” Asa told the lady.

  It took the whole four thousand dollars. They had just enough money left for lunch. They turned into their lane in early afternoon, carried the quilts upstairs, and stored them in the chest. As they closed the lid on the trunk, Asa drew Jessie to him. “Don’t ever do that again,” he told her. “We can’t afford to buy them back again, even if we are millionaires.”

  They did their chores. By then, it was time for supper. They ate leftover Spam kabobs from the night before.

  “I’ll bet no millionaire is eating better than we are tonight,” Asa said. “Could you pass me another kabob, please?”

  They washed the dishes and then sat on the porch, rocking back and forth, talking about their day.

  “I’m bushed,” Jessie said. “It’s hard work being rich.”

  After a time they went in the house, turned off the downstairs lights, brushed their teeth, and went to bed.

  Asa held Jessie to him in the dark.

  “I’m sorry about your grandmother’s wedding ring quilt. If you want, I’ll try to find out who bought it and get it back for you.”

  “That’s okay. That’s what I get for my foolishness. I just hope whoever has it appreciates it.”

  She tried not to cry, thinking about it. It’s an odd thing, how every blessing has its shadow. Their bills were paid. They had more money than they knew what to do with. But at that moment Jessie would have paid a million dollars to have her grandma’s quilt back.

  She didn’t say that to Asa. She just wiggled into him and said, “I love you, honey.”

  “I love you back.”

  He reached up and turned off the light above the bed and fell asleep.

  Jessie eased the covers off and stole over to the blanket chest. She took one of her grandmother’s quilts and spread it on the bed, then got underneath the covers. Smelling the quilt and the memories behind it, she went to sleep.

  Nine
r />   A Dubious Blessing

  Jessie Peacock was glad she’d told Asa about accepting the lottery money, especially since it was the headline story in that week’s edition of the Harmony Herald. When they went to church that Sunday and the offering plate drew near their row, Bea Majors stopped playing the organ, raised off her seat, and peered at Asa to see if he would give anything. All across the meeting room, people were watching.

  The offering plate stopped at row six while Fern Hampton fumbled in her purse for two dollars. Then it was passed to the Wayne Fleming and Deena Morrison pew, formerly the Wilbur Matthews pew. Deena dropped her offering in the plate, then handed it to Dale Hinshaw, the morning’s usher, who executed a well-rehearsed backward full step with a half turn to row eight—the Jessie and Asa Peacock pew.

  Wayne and Deena hadn’t read the Herald. They couldn’t figure out why everyone was staring at them. Then Fern Hampton whispered, “Hey, you’re blocking my view. Slide over,” and that’s when they realized people were looking at Jessie and Asa, not them.

  Wayne slid over and turned to watch, just as Asa eased a check from his billfold, placed it in the offering, and passed the plate to Dale. Dale plucked the check from the plate, unfolded it, and read the numbers.

  “Yep, they tithed. Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he announced to the congregation.

  Bea Majors resumed her playing, but no one was listening. They were turned in their pews, talking to one another.

  “Seems they could have given a little more, what with all the money they won,” Fern Hampton commented to Charlie and Gloria Gardner.

  “Maybe this means we can get some uniforms for our new basketball team,” Bill Muldock whispered to his brother, Harvey.

  Dale Hinshaw was thinking to himself: If I had twenty thousand of that, I could take the Scripture egg project international. Maybe even ship some eggs to the Muslims. His mind reeled at the possibilities.

  He and Ellis Hodge made their way down front with the offering and stood in front of the pulpit.

  “Let us pray,” Sam Gardner said. People stopped talking and bowed their heads. Bea Majors softened her organ playing. Lately, she’d been playing the organ while Sam prayed. She’d gotten the idea from watching a TV preacher. Sam didn’t care for it, but she was the only person in the church who knew how to play the organ so she was beyond correction. Occasionally, while Sam was preaching, she would play background music for emphasis.