Angel Sister

by Ann Gabhart

Now Kate wished she could turn into an angel. Just for a few minutes. Just long enough to convince Grandfather Reece that indeed the Lord had intended for her to find Lorena on the church steps. That the Lord had picked the Merritts, and Kate Merritt in particular, to take care of Lorena. Hadn’t she always taken care of Tori and, half the time, Evie too?

  They could be four sisters instead of three. Tori was excited about the idea, and even Evie didn’t seem to mind. She hadn’t made the first complaint when Kate let Lorena climb in bed with them when she had a bad dream the night before. She’d just scooted over to make room.

  That’s the way it was. They had all made room for Lorena in their hearts. She already belonged, and Kate didn’t see why they had to have a big meeting at the church about it. Lorena being left on the church steps didn’t have a thing to do with who got to decide where she lived. The Lord had already decided that. He had picked Kate as some sort of earth angel-in-training to watch over Lorena, and Kate was ready to do her best to earn her wings.

  Or maybe it was actually Lorena who was the angel. Perhaps the Lord had sent Lorena as a special gift to them so they could keep focused on what was most important in life. Mama was singing hymns in the kitchen while she cooked. Daddy hadn’t forgotten to come home for supper all week. Everybody was happier. And Kate was happiest of all as she and Tori took Lorena to meet Aunt Gertie and then to see Graham.

  When her grandfather finally said amen, Kate raised her head and peeked over her shoulder to see if Aunt Gertie or Graham had sneaked in while Grandfather Reece was praying, but she didn’t see them. She’d hoped they would be there. To be on her side just in case.

  But Graham probably hadn’t even known about the meeting since he hadn’t come to church that morning, and Aunt Gertie, well, Aunt Gertie acted half afraid of Grandfather Reece sometimes. Besides, Uncle Wyatt expected her to stay home and keep him company on Sunday afternoons since he worked every other day of the week. After Sunday dinner, the two of them sat out on their front porch, weather permitting, and anybody wanting to see them had to go there.

  Kate didn’t know why she was worried about needing help anyway. Not when the Lord had chosen her to take care of Lorena. But then as Grandfather Reece started talking and her other grandfather kept staring over at her father and mother, Kate’s stomach turned over, and all that kept her from throwing up was the knot in her throat.

  “A couple in our church have generously offered to give this waif a good home.” Grandfather Reece paused and almost smiled as he looked out at the people in the church. He didn’t look at Kate’s parents. Instead his eyes settled on the Baxters.

  On the other side of Lorena, Mama sat stock-still as she stared up at Grandfather Reece. Kate’s heart began beating too fast, and the knot grew in her throat until she could barely swallow. Why was he looking at the Baxters instead of her parents?

  He went on. “Ella and Joseph Baxter are fine people, grounded in their faith, good workers in the church. They will make excellent parents.”

  Kate looked at her mother and waited for her to say something. She had to tell Grandfather Reece how wrong he was. Her mother’s cheeks were bright red as she clutched her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white. If her mother had been looking at Kate the way she was staring at Grandfather Reece, Kate would have been ready to crawl under the pew. But Grandfather Reece ignored Kate’s mother and kept talking about how wonderful Ella and Joseph Baxter were.

  Kate didn’t care how wonderful his grandfather thought they were. They may have been the ones he had picked out to take care of Lorena, but they weren’t who the Lord had picked out. And if nobody else was going to stand up and tell Grandfather Reece that, Kate would.

  She jumped to her feet. Her mother grabbed her arm to stop her, but Kate shook off her hand. She’d always been told that if the Lord was guiding a person to do something, that person should do it no matter what anybody else said. And the Lord was without a doubt telling her to take care of Lorena.

  “That’s not right,” she said. “We’re Lorena’s family now.”

  Lorena slid off the pew and wrapped her arms tightly around Kate’s leg. “Angel,” she whispered. She buried her face in Kate’s skirt.

  Kate didn’t think anybody heard Lorena’s whisper over the general stir in the church. An audible wave of shock was vibrating off the church walls because she was standing there defying her grandfather. A mere infant in the faith next to him. He was staring at her with thunder in his face, but Kate didn’t care. She stared back without blinking. She was right. He was wrong. She knew it. He knew it, and the Lord knew it. And as soon as she caught her breath again, she was going to tell him as much.

  He shifted his eyes from Kate to her mother. “Nadine, can you not control the daughters you have?”

  Kate’s mother stood up as though all her bones were hurting and stepped in front of Kate with her back to Grandfather Reece. Kate expected her to be mad that she had dared speak up, but instead Mama’s eyes were full of caring as she put her hand on Kate’s shoulder. “Kate, take Lorena outside. And Victoria. This is not for you to decide.” Her voice was soft and kind. She dropped her other hand to touch Lorena’s head.

  “But the Lord has already decided for us,” Kate said. Lorena’s face was pressed so hard against her leg, Kate was afraid the little girl’s nose would be bruised, but she didn’t try to ease her back. Instead Kate stared at her mother and waited for her to demand the people in the church see the truth of what she said.

  “The child is right.” A strong voice rang out from the back of the church.

  Kate jerked her head around to see Aunt Hattie rising up out of the back pew. Kate hadn’t even known she was there. Aunt Hattie pointed toward Grandfather Reece as she went on. “The good Lord don’t like us messin’ in stuff he’s already decided. That’s shaky ground to be steppin’ out on even if you do feel called of the Lord.”

  “The good Lord hasn’t decided anything,” Grandfather Reece thundered. “He certainly hasn’t revealed his truth to this child. Or to you.”

  “Is you saying a child can’t hear the truth of the Lord?” Aunt Hattie not only didn’t back down in the face of his wrath, she actually stepped out into the aisle to confront him face-to-face. Like David going to fight Goliath. “What about little Samuel in the Bible? Has you put that story out of your mind, Reverend? Seems the good Lord did some whisperin’ in that little boy’s ears.”

  “I don’t need you to be telling me the Bible, woman!” Grandfather Reece shouted and brought his hand down so hard on the pulpit that Kate wouldn’t have been surprised to see the wood splinter and fall apart. “You have no right to even be here.” His face was turning an odd shade of purple.

  “How come you to say that? ’Cause you don’t want my black feet defilin’ your holy floor?” Aunt Hattie shook a finger at him. “Let me tell you, it ain’t your floor. The church belongs to the Lord, and he spreads open his arms and welcomes all to step in. And this little child here don’t belong to you either. Or to you, Ella Baxter.” Aunt Hattie turned to point at the woman sitting on the second pew opposite Kate and her family.

  “Well, I never,” Ella Baxter said as she grabbed a fan from the hymnbook rack and began furiously waving it in front of her beet red face. She was breathing hard and looked about to faint. Her husband pulled out his handkerchief to dab her forehead while Carla jumped up from the front row, where she always sat whenever Grandfather Reece was in the pulpit, to hurry back to see to her sister as well.

  Kate had hope for a moment before Grandfather Merritt stood up from his pew and stepped out in the aisle to block Aunt Hattie’s path to the pulpit.

  “That’s more than enough, Hattie,” he said without raising his voice.

  She seemed to visibly shrink in the glare of his hard eyes as the righteous power drained out of her. Even so she held her ground and didn’t completely give up the fight. “You knows it’s the truth, Mr. Preston. You knows it. They’s doin’ that child
wrong. They’s doin’ your Kate wrong. You don’t want no part of that on your conscience.”

  “There are times to speak and times to stay silent. Times when a person gets what he wants and more times when he doesn’t,” he said. “That’s a lesson we all have to learn. A lesson you learned long ago.”

  “Some lessons is hard to keep fresh in a body’s mind.” Aunt Hattie ducked her head. Then she seemed to gather herself and looked over at Kate. “Come on, child. Let’s me and you and the little ones go find a spot outside in the shade.”

  “Do as she says,” Kate’s mother said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kate picked up Lorena, who burrowed her face into Kate’s shoulder. Tori grabbed Kate’s arm and clung almost as tightly as Lorena. Before she turned to go outside, Kate looked past her mother, still standing in front of her, toward the pulpit. Grandfather Reece’s face looked funny, twisted somehow as he yanked at his collar. His mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. A bit of saliva dribbled down his chin.

  Kate’s eyes widened as she called out, “Grandfather Reece!”

  Everybody else had been looking at Kate or Ella Baxter or Grandfather Merritt and Aunt Hattie. Nobody had noticed Grandfather Reece struggling to talk.

  “Father!” Kate’s mother cried as she rushed toward him. When he began to sway on his feet, she wrapped her arms around him, but she wouldn’t have kept him from falling if Kate’s father hadn’t grabbed him too. They carefully lowered him down to the floor where she knelt beside him and began frantically undoing his tie.

  Carla rose to her feet and screamed before she fell back onto the pew with a heavy thump. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and Ella Baxter began fanning her and patting her cheeks. The woman paused in her ministrations to her sister long enough to glare over at Aunt Hattie and spit out her words. “You caused this.”

  Aunt Hattie didn’t pay her the first bit of attention as she pushed past Grandfather Merritt to join Kate’s mother kneeling beside Grandfather Reece. She got down close to his face and spoke in a calm, even tone like she had everything under control and all she had to do was make Grandfather Reece believe it.

  “You think on breathing, Reverend. Push that air in and out. In and out. Slow and steady.” Aunt Hattie put her hand on Grandfather Reece’s chest and watched it rise and fall a moment before she peered up at Kate’s father. “You better get somebody to go fetch the doctor, Victor.”

  There wasn’t a doctor in Rosey Corner. Aunt Hattie was the closest they had, but when somebody was sick enough, the doctor came out from Edgeville. Kate’s father told Evie to run tell Uncle Wyatt to go for the doctor in his automobile. Tori was sent after water. Nobody asked Kate to help. Her father just pointed at the door and told her to go outside and wait.

  This time she didn’t argue. She hugged Lorena closer to her and carried her out of the church. She wanted to climb over the fence and take Lorena off through the woods to some spot where no one would ever find them, but of course, she couldn’t do that. Even if she found Graham and he helped her. They’d still find her, and then they’d say that her trying to hide just proved they were right. The Lord wouldn’t pick somebody to take care of Lorena who would run away. So instead she went over and sat on the stone wall next to the graveyard.

  Up the road she heard Uncle Wyatt start up his car and head to town. A few minutes later Evie and Aunt Gertie hurried into the churchyard and up the church steps. Neither of them noticed Kate and Lorena there in the shade.

  A bee buzzed past Kate’s head, and out on the road a car passed by. It was very hot, but Kate kept her arms around Lorena, and the little girl didn’t try to wiggle free. The hushed murmur of voices drifted out from the open windows of the church, but Kate couldn’t make out any words. She looked toward the gravestones.

  Would the men of the church be digging a new grave there next week for her grandfather? And if they did, would it be her fault for standing up and claiming more knowledge of the Lord than Grandfather Reece? Just thinking about it made Kate quiver inside. How could she have done such a thing?

  Lorena raised her sweaty head up off Kate’s chest and looked at her. “Was he dying?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said.

  “He scared me.”

  Kate tightened her arms around Lorena. “I know. It’s scary when somebody gets sick like that.”

  “Before that. Before he looked so funny and laid down. He scared me.” She ducked her head down against Kate again.

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” Kate said as she stroked Lorena’s hair.

  “Do you promise?”

  She wanted to promise, but she wasn’t really an angel who could make things turn out right the way Lorena hoped she could. Still the Lord did answer prayers. Kate had to believe he would answer this one. “We can pray about it,” she said.

  “Mommy prayed.” Lorena’s words were muffled against Kate’s chest.

  “What did she pray?” Kate asked.

  “For rain and that Daddy would find work. And for Kenton and me to have something to eat. She prayed a lot.” Lorena leaned back and looked at Kate. “Daddy got mad when he heard her praying.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because we were still hungry. He said the Lord didn’t care about her prayers.”

  “The Lord always cares.” Kate smoothed Lorena’s hair back from her face.

  “That’s what Mommy told me. She waited till Daddy wasn’t listening and then she told me so he wouldn’t get mad. She said that was why I could know an angel would come take care of me when they had to leave me here. That she would pray extra hard. So hard the Lord would have to hear her.” Lorena put her hand on Kate’s cheek. “And he did.”

  “He hears all our prayers,” Kate whispered.

  “But we have to say them first, don’t we?”

  “We do.”

  “Will you say them for me?”

  “What do you want me to say? To pray?”

  “Pray for us,” Lorena said. “And for Mommy and Daddy and Kenton. And for him.”

  “Him?”

  “That man. He scared me, but I don’t want him to die.” Lorena let her head fall back down on Kate’s shoulder.

  “Neither do I. I’ll pray.” Kate laid her cheek against Lorena’s head and stroked the little girl’s back as she softly spoke the prayer words. “Dear Father in heaven. Watch over us and Lorena’s mother and father and brother. Protect them and give them food to eat. And please, please help Grandfather Reece be all right. Amen.”

  15

  ______

  They carried the preacher across the field back to his house on a stretcher that Victor’s father kept at the store just for emergencies like this. The man couldn’t walk. His left side was paralyzed. A stroke, according to Aunt Hattie. She didn’t go across the field with them. Said there wasn’t anything to be done except to try to keep him as comfortable as possible while they waited for the doctor. And pray.

  One of the deacons at the church had stood up and offered up a prayer for their pastor while they lifted him over onto the stretcher. Reverend Reece stared up at Victor out of the eye that wasn’t drooping and tried to say something. The words seemed to get all snarled up in his mouth and came out as little better than gibberish. When even Nadine couldn’t understand him, the man’s face flushed red again and he began flailing at them with his good arm.

  “Best try prayin’ some calm down on him,” Aunt Hattie said as she scooted back out of range. “Else things is gonna go from bad to worse for him.”

  Nadine pushed his arm down and stroked the sweat off his forehead with her handkerchief. “Shh, Father. You can tell us later. Now you have to stop trying to talk and let us carry you home where we can take care of you.”

  Carla had to nearly be carried to the house as well. Her sister and brother-in-law got on either side of her and held her up while they helped her walk across the pasture field behind her husband on the stretcher. With each step, the
keening wail rising from Carla got a little louder until halfway to the house, Victor’s father looked over his shoulder at her and said, “For the love of all that’s holy, woman, pull yourself together. The man has not quit breathing as yet, but I know not how much more of that sound he can bear.”

  Carla stopped walking and clamped her mouth shut for a moment as she glared at Victor’s father before she let out an even louder wail. For a minute, Victor thought his father might drop his end of the stretcher and be done with it, but he clenched his jaw and kept moving forward. Victor was calling up some of the same sort of resolve.

  Just the sight of the stretcher had summoned up unwelcome memories from the war when Victor saw far too many of his fellow soldiers carried away on similar stretchers. Of course they were the luckier ones. Others lay out in no-man’s-land with no hope of being carried anywhere as the war between the trenches went on. Then again perhaps the ones who had passed beyond the misery of war to a better place were luckiest of all. At least they no longer had to crouch in the trenches in fear that if they raised their head a fraction of an inch too high a German sharpshooter would end their misery.

  Victor blinked his eyes and tried to push the war memories out of his thoughts. He needed to concentrate on helping Nadine and her father now and not think about the war. He didn’t know why the war kept haunting his thoughts lately. It had all happened years ago. It had nothing to do with his life now. Nobody was dying in the mud now. He wasn’t running between the trees of a French forest straight toward the German guns, daring a bullet or a piece of shrapnel to slam into his head or chest. He was in Rosey Corner where he wanted to be.

  He was one of the really lucky ones who had somehow lived through the cold and the mud and the artillery fire and made it home to his beautiful wife. They had a good family. They might not have a lot of money, but they had a roof over their heads and food on their table. There was need for a blacksmith’s skills yet a little longer, and if those motor vehicles did push horses off the road, perhaps he could find a way to adapt and learn to pound out and shape some other need besides horseshoes. Garden hoes perhaps, or iron gates. Something useful.