Angel Sister

by Ann Gabhart

  He couldn’t expect to get any money out of the whimsical horse heads he liked to shape out of scrap iron on occasion. Those were just poetry for his soul, something to break the monotony of each day burning into the next. A man needed poetry. A man needed confirmation of his worthiness in this world. Something he’d certainly never received from the man he was carrying on the stretcher across the field or from the man holding up the back end of the stretcher. Something lately he couldn’t even drum up inside himself.

  Nadine’s father groaned as they carried him up the porch steps. He wasn’t a light man, and both Victor and his father were sweating profusely. Victor had tried to get his father to allow one of the other men in the church to help carry the preacher to his house, but Preston Merritt was too proud to admit another man might be stronger than he was, even if age was beginning to chip away at that strength. His father was breathing hard as they maneuvered the stretcher through the front door Nadine held open for them, then on toward the bedroom.

  Carla was not a tidy housekeeper, and dirty clothes covered the rumpled bed and spilled out onto the floor. As they moved into the room, a cloud of gnats rose up from a forgotten plate of brown apple peelings on the table beside the bed. Body odor mixed with the smell of talcum powder and liniment. It was not a pleasant combination. When Carla didn’t follow them into the bedroom and instead dropped down on the couch in the sitting room, Nadine shut the bedroom door to keep out the church people who had followed the stretcher across the field and into the house.

  In the next room, Carla kept up her moaning, but with the door shut between them, the noise was bearable. Nadine pitched the dirty clothes off the bed and smoothed the covers as best she could. “Clean sheets would be better, but heaven only knows where to find them in this mess,” she muttered, more to herself than to the two men waiting to put her father down.

  They shifted the man from the stretcher to the bed. He was no longer fighting against them, as if he had realized something of what had happened to him. His mouth was still moving, but now Victor thought it might be in silent prayer. At least the Lord would understand his words even if the sounds were as mixed up in his head as they had been coming out of his mouth at the church.

  “Thank you for your help,” Nadine told Victor’s father before she began unlacing her father’s shoes. “And I know my father would thank you too if he were able.”

  Victor wasn’t so sure of that as Reverend Reece glared up at Preston Merritt with his good eye. It was just as well he couldn’t speak his thoughts. The two men had never gotten along. Even before Victor and Nadine married. It went back farther than that. Farther than Victor could remember.

  “No man would do less,” Victor’s father said as he leaned down to roll up the canvas stretcher. He kept his eyes away from the man on the bed. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Nadine said politely. “But Victor and I can manage now.”

  “Right,” Victor’s father said.

  Victor didn’t know how a person could put so much scorn into one little word. His father didn’t think they could manage—he had never thought they could manage. Victor curled his hands into fists and thought about slamming him in the face. But what would that prove except that his father was right? He couldn’t manage his temper. He couldn’t manage his drinking. He couldn’t manage his life.

  Nadine dropped her father’s shoe to the floor and came over to stand beside Victor. Behind her, Reverend Reece tried to say something, but she didn’t look back at him. She just stood silent beside Victor, as unmoving as one of those trees standing by the water that the psalmist talked about in the Bible.

  He had once thought he could do anything as long as she stood like that beside him. He could face down his father. He could face down her father. He could go across the sea and fight the Germans. As long as Nadine loved him, he could stand his ground and be the man she thought he was. That was before the whiskey sirens started enticing him toward the rocky shores that promised to wreck his life.

  He tried to shut his ears to their song and hear Nadine’s song instead, but the truth was, he wanted a drink. He hadn’t had a drink for four days, but he needed one now. He was weak. He had always been weak. Not strong like his father. Not strong like Preston Jr. Not strong like Nadine. If he let his feet do what they wanted, they would walk right out of this house and go to that place in Rosey Corner where any time of the day or night a man could get a bottle. It just cost more on Sunday. Both in money and self-respect.

  As if his father could read his thoughts, he shook his head before he reached for the doorknob to leave the room. Then he turned back for a moment. “The preacher was right. You won’t be able to keep her. Not the way you’ve been living.”

  At first Victor wasn’t sure who he was talking about as he heard an echo from long ago. You won’t be able to keep her. That was what his father had said to Victor about Nadine almost twenty years ago. The words had traveled overseas with him, lived in the trenches with him, and still tore through his heart at times. He did not deserve a woman as wonderful as Nadine. He had never deserved a woman like Nadine. But yet she was still standing beside him, unflinching in the face of his father’s scorn.

  But of course it was the child his father spoke of today. Victor frowned at him and asked, “What difference does it make to you? She’s just a little girl in need of a home.”

  “I’ll not have you trying to turn some gypsy child into a Merritt.” He opened the bedroom door and stalked through the house to the porch with a curt nod of his head to acknowledge the people clustered in the front room around Carla. He’d go home to sit alone on his porch or in his parlor with a glass of water while he waited for the daylight to come on Monday morning so he could go back to the store and count his bolts of cloth or the cans on the shelves or figure the worth of the gallons of gasoline in his pump.

  Victor shut the door and turned to Nadine.

  “What are we going to do about Kate?” she asked.

  “Nothing’s been decided yet.”

  “We can’t fight your father.” She kept her voice low. “Or mine.”

  “We’re not going to think about it now. Right now we’re going to take care of your father. We’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here.” Victor put his hand on Nadine’s shoulder.

  “That’s what I told Kate the first day she brought Lorena home. But tomorrow always comes. Always.” She looked close to tears. But then her father was making a gurgling noise, and she turned from one worry to another as she hurried back to his side.

  She pushed a pillow under his head and wiped the sweat off his face with an edge of the sheet. “The doctor will be here soon, Father.”

  The man on the bed groaned and flailed his arm against the bed as if he knew the doctor would be of no help. He was trapped in a body that no longer did what he wanted it to do.

  Nadine looked up at Victor. “Tell Kate I need her to help me clean up in here.”

  “What about the child?”

  “She’ll be all right with Evangeline and Victoria. They can play with her.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Lorena. I was thinking about Kate.”

  “Why does everything have to be so hard?” Nadine sighed and her shoulders drooped. Then she pulled herself together and said with more assurance in her voice, “No one will come to take Lorena away today. Tomorrow may come, but it’s not here yet.”

  16

  ______

  One day at a time,” Nadine repeated under her breath after Victor left. That was how the Bible said a person should live. After all, life was uncertain at the best of times, and no one knew how many days he or she was going to be given. How many times had she heard her father preach about the man who had all his storerooms filled and thought his future was guaranteed, only to find out death held no regard for man’s plans? The only place to lay up treasures was in heaven.

  Still, no matter where a person put his treasure, tha
t person never started out the day expecting it to be his or her last, unless perhaps he was marching into battle or she was laboring to bring a child into the world. Certainly her father had not expected to look death in the eye when he’d risen out of bed that morning to go preach to his people. Now he was back in the same bed unable to even ask for a drink of water. What would the man do without his voice? What would the church do without his voice? He had been their leader since before Nadine could remember.

  But she couldn’t worry about the church now. Not with so much else to worry about. Not with her father grunting again and struggling to sit up.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and gently but firmly pressed him back down on the pillows. “You can’t get up. If you try, you’ll fall and what good will that do you? You might end up with something broken.”

  He reached over to grab his useless hand. He shook it at her, then dropped it to point at his mouth. She had no problem interpreting his meaning. He was already broken. She mashed her mouth together to keep from showing the pity she felt for him before she spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. “You can’t change what has happened. You won’t make it better by fighting against the truth of that.”

  He looked near explosion as he balled up his good hand into a fist. She didn’t flinch away from him. He had never hit her. He had always used words to punish her. A frown and a few well-chosen words from him could still turn her into a guilty child afraid to speak. Just as she’d been afraid to confront him in the church.

  No such qualms had stopped Kate. If Nadine’s father lived through this stroke, Nadine would hear about that. If he remembered. Perhaps the stroke would wipe away that memory. Unfortunately Father Merritt’s memory would stay crystal clear. And he too had sided against them.

  Kate tapped on the bedroom door before she opened it and slipped inside. Her eyes barely touched on her grandfather on the bed before she whipped them away. “Daddy said you needed me.” Her face was pale and pinched looking.

  “I do. I’m sorry, but you know Evangeline would be useless at helping me clean up this kind of mess.” Nadine spoke in a low voice with her back to the bed.

  Kate looked around. “Yeah. Evie would be gagging and holding her nose for sure.” She wrinkled her own nose. “So what do we need? Soap? Water?”

  “A bucket of hot water and some cold water in a glass for Father.” When Kate started to turn away to get the water, Nadine stopped her with a hand on her arm and whispered, “Is Lorena all right?”

  “Tori’s playing paper dolls with her,” Kate said, and then her face twisted as she tried to keep back tears. “They can’t give her to Mrs. Baxter, Mama. They can’t.” Pure despair washed across her face. “Can they?”

  Nadine had no answer for her. Instead she folded her arms around Kate and held her tightly for a moment as she smoothed down her hair. “Shh, sweetheart. Nothing’s going to happen today.” She pulled back away from her. “Nothing that hasn’t already happened.”

  “Mrs. Baxter asked me where Lorena was.” Kate looked worried. “Like I should have brought her to her.”

  “No, no. Nothing’s been decided. Besides, Mrs. Baxter has her hands full with Carla right now. Is Carla still carrying on?”

  “I don’t know. I came in the back door through the kitchen. I didn’t want to walk through all the deacons on the front porch. Thought they might be praying, but it sounded like they were just talking about needing rain. Out in the kitchen Mrs. Baxter was talking to Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Spaulding about doing dishes or something. None of them were praying either.” Kate frowned a little. “Shouldn’t they be praying?”

  “I’m sure they’re praying in their hearts just as we are.” Nadine peeked over her shoulder at her father, who was breathing easier and seemed calmer. She sighed. “I suppose I should go see if Carla wants to come sit with Father. After all, she is his wife.”

  At Nadine’s suggestion that Carla come into the bedroom to sit with her husband, Carla threw up her hands and went limp in a near faint. “Oh, Nadine, I couldn’t. I simply can’t bear to see him that way. Your father so strong and now stricken down and twisted by that awful woman’s evil words. It’s more than I can bear.”

  “No one’s to blame. Strokes just happen.” Nadine didn’t know why she wasted her breath. Nothing she could say would keep them from blaming Aunt Hattie for angering her father to the point of collapse.

  Carla sat up straighter and glared at Nadine. “You heard her. Standing up and defying him in his own church. The shame of it. She’s the one who should have been stricken down.”

  Nadine opened her mouth to defend Aunt Hattie again, but then she could almost hear Aunt Hattie whispering in her ear. Let it go, child. Better me than our Kate. What Carla said made little difference anyway. Nadine clamped her mouth shut and pulled in a slow breath. “Father is going to need a lot of care,” she said.

  Carla let out another moan and covered her face with her hands again. Ella Baxter pushed in front of Nadine. She murmured a few comforting words to Carla before she frowned over her shoulder at Nadine. “Leave her alone. Can’t you see how distraught she is?”

  Nadine stared past Ella at Carla. The woman was disgusting and useless. Nadine had never liked her, even before the day she came home from school and found her settled into her father’s bedroom. Mrs. Orrin Reece. Nadine had never forgiven her father. Not because he had married the woman, although that was bad enough, but because he had not bothered to tell Nadine. Instead, Carla met her at the front door with the news and an infuriating smirk as she stood there, blocking Nadine’s way into her own house.

  Nadine had heard rumors about her father and Carla that year as she finished out high school. Victor himself warned her of the possibility of a romance between them, but she didn’t believe him. She hadn’t wanted to believe him. Not her father and Carla Murphy.

  Carla had been a devout member of the Rosey Corner Baptist Church since before Nadine was born. In attendance every time the doors were open. Unmarried, she claimed, because her widowed mother who suffered from a nervous condition depended on her, the eldest daughter, to help her at home. Then her mother had passed on, and Carla had needed her pastor to comfort her through her grief. Comfort that had grown and entrapped him.

  “How could you?” Nadine had demanded of him that day when she found him in the backyard stepping off the garden spot for James Robert to dig up.

  He paused and turned to her as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “How could I what?”

  “Marry that woman. Without so much as a word to me. To us.” Nadine threw out her arm to include James Robert, who was leaning on his shovel and digging a hole in the ground with his eyes. “Is that all the consideration you can show us?”

  Her father’s eyes narrowed on her. “Control your emotions, Nadine Glynn, before your lack of restraint carries you into sin. I have married Carla Murphy. She is now your stepmother and you will treat her with respect.”

  “Carla Murphy will never be any kind of mother to me.” Nadine spat out the words.

  He matched her fire with coldness. “That is your choice. We all make choices. Some good and some bad. I will pray for your choices.”

  Suddenly everything was crystal clear to Nadine. “You’re talking about me and Victor, aren’t you? That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? A way to punish me.”

  “Wrong choices always bring their own punishment.”

  He had certainly found out the truth of that, Nadine thought now as she went back into the bedroom. Nadine had married Victor the day after graduation and followed him to Louisville where he hired on to help build Camp Zachary Taylor before he enlisted. When he was shipped to France, Nadine had come back to Rosey Corner, but she’d never gone home again. Instead Gertie and Wyatt had opened their home and their hearts to her. James Robert had left the day after Nadine married to go live with Orrin Jr., who had bought a farm in Indiana. Nadine’s father was left alone with his choice. It had not been a particularl
y happy one.

  Kate followed Nadine back into the bedroom with the water. Nadine raised her father’s head and tipped the glass up as though giving a small child a drink. He tried to swallow it, but most of the water dribbled out of his mouth onto his shirt.

  “Hand me that handkerchief off the dresser,” Nadine told Kate.

  After Kate brought the handkerchief to Nadine, she stood beside the bed and stared up at the ceiling, then down at the floor before she closed her eyes for a moment as if to gather courage. When she opened them again, she finally looked straight at her grandfather’s face. “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” she said quietly. A tear edged out of the corner of her eye. “I am so sorry.”

  Nadine tensed, ready to grab her father’s arm if he swung it at Kate. She had no idea what her father might do, but then to her great surprise, an answering tear formed in his good eye, and he reached for Kate’s hand. He grasped it as if he had caught hold of a lifeline and tried to speak, but none of the sounds added up to words. Kate brushed away her tears with her free hand and listened intently. “You want me to get you something?”

  He nodded his head, a look of relief in his eyes that someone had tried to understand. He made more noises as he frowned with a growing look of frustration at their inability to understand him.

  “I bet I know,” Kate said with a smile. She gently freed her hand from his and picked up the Bible off the table by the side of the bed. She let it fall open in her hands and read, “‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’” She looked from the Bible to her grandfather. “That’s one of your favorites, isn’t it, Grandfather? The Lord must have guided my eyes to it for you.” She closed the Bible and laid it on the bed beside him.

  He pushed a burst of air out of his lungs as he wrapped his hand around the Bible, and one corner of his mouth turned up in a twisted smile, but a smile nevertheless. Nadine could almost see the calm washing over him. He opened his mouth and an actual word came out. “Amen.”