Lead Me Home

by Amy Sorrells

  “There’s nothing more the bank can do for us.”

  Bonnie sighed, then pulled her mint-green cardigan across her chest as if bracing herself against a gust of wind. She had a plain face, softened further by a generous application of loose powder. She wore her hair rolled and set in a style that reminded him of his grandmother. Folks could easily pass by her in a store or on a sidewalk having no idea she was the sort of person the Lord used to help hold men together when their worlds collapsed.

  “We’ve no more bonds, no more savings, and we owe too much already for another extension. And you know I can’t possibly give another sermon on tithing. The few folks who are left don’t have anything else to give.”

  A tear etched a trail down Bonnie’s powdered face. “I know,” she said as she pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket. “I can’t believe it’s come to this.”

  “Me either.” James stood and walked to the window. The familiar thump-thump of a car woofer approached, and eventually Silas Canady’s tricked-out late-model pickup truck appeared. The ginormous off-road tires turned slowly, and just in case someone might miss it coming down the street, bright-red-and-orange flame graphics gleamed on the shiny black paint of the hood and sides. As the truck rolled by, Silas tossed a cigarette butt onto the church’s lawn.

  In the park across the street, three mothers stood and talked while pushing their toddlers on the swings. Older children swung themselves across the monkey bars, slid down the slides, and he could hear them squeal as they spun themselves dizzy on the rusty merry-go-round. The park had been a popular place on Sunday afternoons when the church was in its prime, when the pews were filled in the morning and the picnics afterward lasted deep into the afternoon.

  James put his head in his hands and let the tears that had threatened as Kernodle had sat in front of him flow freely. It wasn’t the first time Bonnie had seen him weep. But it wasn’t as if it was a usual occurrence, either. He was grateful she was not uncomfortable around a weeping man, that she would sit there and keep him company without trying to fill the awkward moment with pointless assurances.

  This was a time to weep if there ever was one.

  And he was grateful she allowed him that.

  2

  Nineteen-year-old Noble Burden wished for the thousandth time he were someplace else as he grabbed hold of the pair of slimy legs and pulled using all his strength and leaning backward to give added force with his body weight.

  “Eustace? I could use a little help in here!” He called for his older brother, but the only response was the scuttle of mice and rats beneath the straw and the heaving sighs of Dolly, the laboring Jersey heifer. He’d expected her first birth to be a challenge since she was one of the smallest of the females, but he hadn’t expected this much trouble. Most of the heifers took care of birthing on their own, and he’d arrive at the barn in the morning to find a new calf standing beside its mother and blinking at him like nothing remarkable had happened. Dolly was lucky Noble had shown up early for the morning milking.

  Another pull on the calf’s legs and Noble slouched down against the scratchy wooden planks partitioning the stall. His chest was heaving in the same rhythmic cadence as Dolly’s.

  “It’s okay, girl. You’re doing great.” Noble thought he saw the cow blink in acknowledgment. She was one of sixty-three cows in the herd, which was the largest it’d ever been since their father had left them and all the work of the dairy a few years back. Soon they’d have close to eighty when they moved the surviving girls from Frank Whitmore’s herd to their farm. A tragedy, what happened to Whitmore. But Noble didn’t have time to dwell on that now.

  “Eustace!” Noble called again, exasperated, as he leaned his head against the stall. He was sinewy, but this predicament needed the advantage of his brother’s burliness and strength. Noble jumped to his feet as Dolly let out a long, deep groan, then grabbed the calf’s bony legs again and waited until the cow’s abdomen stiffened with the peak of the contraction.

  He pulled.

  “I always wanted . . . to grow up . . . to be . . . a midwife . . . to a crazy . . . progesterone-imploding . . . cow!”

  The contraction ended, and both Noble and Dolly sank back into the straw again. “This isn’t working, girl. I gotta find Eustace to give me some help here.”

  As he stood, the barn door slid open and Eustace appeared, his hulking frame filling the doorway, dirty white Purdue ball cap—the last thing their father had given him—set too high on his head of thick, wavy brown hair. Size was about the only thing going for that boy.

  “’Bout time you showed up. I need the twine. May have to turn her over.” A calf-pulling device was on their list of things to buy when they got the money, but they never had the money. Twine would have to do.

  Eustace took in the sight before him, and his hands began to twitch, then his arms, until they flapped like a crazed chicken. Dolly was Eustace’s favorite cow. He could often be found late at night sleeping out in the field beside her, the big, dumb cow seeming to draw as much comfort from Eustace as he did from her. Noble knew if anything happened to her, his brother would be even more of a mess than he already was.

  “Cut that out now. Don’t got time for your worrying. This’ll all be okay if you calm down and help me.”

  Eustace’s arms kept going and didn’t show signs of slowing down.

  “Eustace!” Noble shouted, causing Dolly to startle, and Eustace’s arms slowed to a wide sway; then with his right hand he reached up and began rubbing the calloused spot of scalp behind his ear that didn’t grow hair anymore. His expression was flat in its usual downcast, otherworldly way. “Dolly’s gonna be okay. But I need you to get me the twine. Twine and iodine. Listen to me now. The twine’s in the storeroom, beside the training harnesses on the bottom shelf. Iodine’s there too. Quick now, go get ’em.”

  The storeroom, like the rest of the milking chamber, would be bright from a fresh powdering of lime. Noble heard glass bottles of iodine knocking to the ground and imagined the ruddy liquid painting a blood-like stream across the white, powdery floor. He prayed—though doubtful any of his petitions ever reached the Lord’s ears—that Eustace would keep on looking, and sure enough, he returned to the stall and held up the twine in one hand and a bottle of iodine in the other like they were prizes at the county fair.

  Noble took the twine. He poured the iodine over his hands and the hind end of Dolly. He wrapped the twine around the calf’s protruding hooves, then gave one end of the twine back to Eustace. Together they secured the calf’s legs, emerging from the exhausted heifer’s hindquarters.

  “We gotta turn you over, girl,” Noble said to the cow, who huffed back in distress. “Onto your back now.”

  Noble nodded at Eustace. Together the two young men rolled Dolly onto her back, which would hopefully widen out her pelvis and allow the calf to slide through. Noble let go of the twine long enough to grab Dolly’s harness and tie it to the metal rung in the concrete foundation of the barn. He secured it tight so she couldn’t flip all the way over or try to get up, but Dolly acted too weak and worn out to bother fighting.

  “We don’t got much time if this calf’s gonna live,” Noble said.

  With Dolly’s next contraction, Noble and Eustace, standing at Dolly’s shoulders, yanked hard. The calf’s front legs bent toward them, then slid farther up Dolly’s swollen udders and belly.

  “It’s working!”

  Eustace grinned slightly in acknowledgment and groaned with relief, sweat pouring down his face and neck.

  “Here comes another contraction. Ready?”

  Eustace nodded.

  They yanked again with everything they had, Eustace leaning his broad shoulders into the work, and it paid off. The calf, in its entirety, stretched across Dolly’s belly, then flopped onto the hay, moistened with blood and birth fluids.

  Noble loosened Dolly’s harness, grabbed a couple of old towels from the railing, and tossed one to Eustace. The two of them began rub
bing the calf to dry it and stimulate it to breathe, Eustace’s fingers, which were thick as sausages, awkward but gentle as he worked over the bony ribs and belly.

  “It’s a girl,” Noble said.

  The calf jerked and rolled its eyes back in its head, each new breath a shock and relief to its newly working lungs.

  Dolly curved her neck around and licked her baby, smoothing the slime off its eyes so they opened and blinked back the glare of the early morning sun spilling through cracks in the old barn walls.

  “Had a rough time of it, didn’t you, little one? But you made it.” Noble stroked the calf’s neck and glanced at Dolly. “You too, mama. That was a rough one, but you’re gonna be alright now.”

  Noble watched as a lopsided smile spread over his brother’s face. “You did good, too, Eustace. Glad you showed up when you did.”

  Without any indication he’d heard Noble at all, Eustace kept petting and rubbing the calf, cleaning its fur, and stroking the neck and head of Dolly until whatever thoughts went through his head seemed to assure him the two creatures were going to be fine. The calf jerked, its knobby knees pushing against the ground until first its hindquarters, then its front legs, lifted off the ground. Its moist nose nuzzled Eustace, the tender mouth searching, near frantic for something to suckle. A laugh, too loud and punctuated with gulps of air when he inhaled, rose and spilled out, muffling against the low-hanging roof of the calving stalls. He stood, muscles sinewy from the work of the birth, and wandered back outside the barn into the dewy morning without saying a word.

  Eustace never had said a word.

  Not ever.

  Noble remembered being dragged along to doctors and therapists and special education meetings at the school back when Mama had tried to find help for Eustace. Some said he had autism, but he made too much eye contact and clung to Mama too much for that to be it. Some said Asperger’s, but he didn’t fit all that criteria, either. Some said he knew how to talk plenty and simply chose not to out of belligerence, which had caused their father to rage and try to beat a voice out of him on more than one occasion. Eventually Mama gave up trying to figure him out and fix him since nothing anyone recommended changed anything, and they all—except Dad—agreed to do their best and resigned themselves to accept him how he was.

  As a result, Eustace grew happier, as much as they could tell from what emotion he did show. He smiled on occasion, belted out awkward and guttural laughter or anguish depending on the situation, and wandered off less—but frequently, all the same. Usually he roamed the pastures to find Dolly or a new butterfly to add to his extensive collection—one that would be the envy of any lepidopterist—or went to the barn to feed and dote on the calves. As he grew older, the wandering was still a problem, though not as frequent as it had been when he was younger. He didn’t seem to mind he had no human friends to speak of. He was unusually strong and able to help Noble and Mama when they needed him. Years of farmwork had built his frame large and solid even as whatever ailed him seemed to have stripped his brain bare. And the dingy white ball cap, constantly perched crooked and too high on his head, topped it all off.

  There had of course been moments when Noble felt plenty frustrated or ashamed of his older brother. Once, years ago when Noble had begun to notice their differences, he had thought long and hard about how to ask Mama about it. He’d been standing on a stool next to her as she worked on making a meat loaf. His job was to crush up the crackers to add to the lump of meat and other ingredients she kneaded.

  “Mama?”

  “Mmm-hmmm?”

  He’d hesitated, almost deciding against asking as he poured the crumbs into her bowl. But then, “Why’s Eustace the way he is?”

  Mama’d pressed her knuckles into the meat, then folded and squeezed the crumbs through. She wiped her hands on her apron before taking a round white onion in one hand, holding it down on the cutting board, and beginning to chop. She’d brushed her hair—or had it been a tear?—away from her face. “The way he is. Yes. Well.”

  “Why’d God make him stupid?” He hadn’t been sure she would answer, and as soon as the words left his mouth, he felt the shame of never being able to get them back, the sort of regret even as a child he’d known would change things he hadn’t intended to change. He learned then some things hurt bad enough without saying them out loud.

  She’d turned to him then, his beautiful mama, blue eyes rimmed in red, unaccusing, but spent. She’d bent down so her eyes were at his level.

  “Maybe the better question, dear Noble, is why not?”

  A question for a question. Noble didn’t have an answer, of course, and after that, Noble knew Eustace was one more thing in their lives that couldn’t be fixed, one more thing to tolerate, one more dream of “normalcy” dashed, one more thought of independence derailed. Growing up farming as Noble had, as his daddy had, and his granddaddy before him, meant growing up knowing a lot of things were just plain left up to nature. Things like the yield of a crop. Coyotes taking down a calf born too soon out on the back pasture. The path of a tornado. The cheating heart of a man. Disconnected wires in a poor boy’s brain. The death of a preacher’s wife. A guitar that collected more dust than accolades. And the way a dreamer’s heart grew restless.

  3

  “I hate you!”

  Shelby, all of seventeen and too pretty for her own good, stood obstinate and irate before James. She looked so much like her mother with her long dark curls and freckles spattered across her nose, which—also like her mother—she tried to hide with makeup. The only thing she seemed to have inherited from him were his green eyes and height—she was five foot nine and he was six foot five.

  “Just admit it. You wish it were me instead of her who died.”

  “Shelby, wait—”

  So much for a gentle word turning away wrath. James braced himself against the slam of the front door, the force of which popped the trim work off the casing again. He’d been mowing and putzing around the yard all day, trying to take out his frustrations against George Kernodle from yesterday. Molly’s flower beds wilted quick under the heat of the August sun, even with the rains they’d been having. He’d watered the hollyhocks, tied up and restaked the tomato plants, and listened to C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed on audio as he rode along on the riding mower, a gift from Molly for their tenth wedding anniversary still going strong. He often listened to audiobooks by the great theologians, and a handful of newer ones, while he mowed as a way to keep up with sermon research. He supposed he’d switch to fiction in a few weeks, maybe catch up with all the Tom Clancy novels he’d been wanting to read. Or maybe he’d listen to nothing at all except for the whir of the motor and the blades. When he’d finally come inside, he’d found Shelby in her bedroom primping to go out.

  “Where you goin’, hon?” He took a long draw from the glass of lemonade he’d brought upstairs with him.

  “Out.” She’d focused on the lit makeup mirror and patted more concealer on her cheeks.

  “With whom?”

  She evaded his questioning until things escalated to the fight, admitted to going out with Cade Canady, and ran outside to her old, two-tone blue-and-white pickup truck, splotchy with Bondo and rusted around the wheel wells. Whatever had happened between her and Noble Burden, whom she’d run around with for years, was beyond him. That she was chasing after Cade, who aside from being too short for her was also well known as the town bully like his father, Silas, was a true conundrum.

  James followed her as far as the front porch and watched her peel the pickup out of the gravel driveway and spray up a plume of dust, which took its time settling over the quiet county road.

  “Protect her, Lord. You know the troubles which surround her even better than I,” he said softly.

  He knew somehow he should rise above the emotion Shelby directed at him, that he should realize it was just a phase, an expression of the grief she was having to work through. But each time they argued or she left felt like one more failure. Deal
ing with the anger and disappointment of others—family in particular—wasn’t new to him, but he never really had gotten used to it. When he was a young man going to college at Furman, his father, Orry Horton, worked in a tire factory and reminded James often that he worked his fingers burned and bloody to get James there. Orry had essentially disowned James when he decided to pursue full-time ministry. Church, let alone the work of ministry, were not high values in the life of a factory man and his family.

  “I raised my son to work for his pay and for his honor, not to hide behind a pulpit,” his father had said. “What’d religion ever do for anyone anyhow? You don’t see Jesus comin’ down from the sky and savin’ us from this no-good life, do ya?”

  His father-in-law, Dr. Henry Montgomery, was a plastic surgeon and had been against James and Molly’s union from the start, convinced James would never be able to provide her with the standard of living to which she’d been accustomed. Dr. Montgomery had sent Molly to Furman, too, in the hopes she’d meet a nice medical student from an old-money Southern family, but she’d wound up with James instead.

  James trudged upstairs to the bedroom he and Molly had shared, and he sat on the stool beside her dressing table.

  “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” Those were the words of C. S. Lewis on the loss of his wife, Joy, to cancer.

  Yes, he’d thought as the words streamed from the audiobook. That’s exactly how I feel.

  James fiddled with one of the pearl earrings on the silver tray before him. He kept the table dusted but otherwise unchanged from the day she died. Hair ties and makeup brushes, perfume and jewelry were all neatly stored in little glass and silver containers she’d collected from antique stores. He picked up a frame with a picture of the two of them from their wedding day, her curls piled high and spilling around her creamy white skin and the freckles on her nose she had lamented so. Her head rested on his chest and their smiles were wide and unrestrained.