Whisper Town

by Patricia Hickman

  Jeb felt the need to swear. He refrained, at least where George was concerned.

  The jailhouse door came open. Will Honeysack carried a rock through the door. He showed it to Maynard. “You see this? Every elder sitting on the board of Church in the Dell got one just like it through the window of their business this morning, and you know it’s not the first time. Nice how-do-you-do, as if we don’t have enough to contend with.”

  Jeb took the rock, turned it over twice, and held it up to the sunlight coming through the window.

  “What do you make of it, Reverend?” asked Maynard.

  “Looks like the work of a fertile imagination,” said Jeb.

  “Jeb, this whole business has gone as far as I can take it,” said Will. “I want you to know that even as your friend, I lose control of things when they go this far.”

  “I’m glad you still call me friend, Will.”

  Will took the rock from Jeb’s hand and laid it on Maynard’s desk. “I’m glad we ran into one another so I have the chance to tell you first, Jeb.”

  “What is it you need to tell me, Will?”

  “I didn’t call this meeting tonight. But as head deacon, I have no choice but to attend.”

  Jeb could not take his eyes off the rock. It held Maynard’s eyes too, and Will’s—like they all waited for the thing to go off in their faces. Jeb raked the rock into the deputy’s garbage pail. “It’s a rock, boys, not a gun.”

  “They’re calling this meeting private, like I’m not supposed to invite you, Jeb. I don’t have to agree to that, and so I am inviting you. You come if you want and I’ll make sure you have your say. After supper, say six, then?” Will left the jailhouse as though he dragged the entire hundred-year-old structure back to his store by a single rope.

  Maynard retrieved the rock. “As evidence,” he kept saying.

  Lucky twirled and looked at the dress in the parlor mirror and then touched each button, testing the threads’ security. “Angel give it to me,” she told Jeb. “That Josie lady better not say a word about it. It’s not from her old things anyway, but Angel’s.”

  Angel measured the distance from the hem to the floor. Faith Bottoms had evened out her hair quite well. It hung above her shoulders and made her look older.

  Jeb picked up Ida May from the rocker and set her on the floor. Ida May had grown gangly over the winter. When he lifted her, her limbs hung long and thin, spidery. They alighted on the floor as though she weighed less than air. Jeb turned the chair away from the girls’ modeling of rag bag dresses and stared through the front window. In one hour the automobile lights would flood through the tree trunks of the church lawn. Will Honeysack would call the meeting to order and Floyd Whittington would second it. Sam would rush into matters while Will staved him off and waited, in some manner hoping and not hoping the Church in the Dell minister would show.

  Jeb rocked out of the chair and paced to the window, breathing out shallow streams of air, scratching at his chapped lips, and then returning to the rocker to rock some more. Angel and Lucky laughed and they were loud. Jeb inched the rocker farther away from them and thought he heard an automobile engine. A minute passed and he settled back into the rocker. He glanced up and found all three girls staring at him. He turned his back completely on them.

  “Something’s wrong with Dub,” Ida May whispered.

  “You like Lucky’s dress, Jeb?” asked Angel. “It’s a good fit.”

  Jeb gave Angel and Lucky an obligatory nod. Myrtle cried from the children’s room. “I’ll see to her,” said Lucky.

  Angel crawled on her knees and then sat back on her feet beside Jeb. She stared with him out the window. “What’s going to happen?”

  Jeb kept looking hard at the trees and the cold sky overhead and feeling little parts of him slipping away with the shortening winter day. “I couldn’t say.”

  “I’m glad we know about Myrtle now, I mean, that we know that Lucky’s her momma and all.”

  Jeb felt like an attempt to speak might stick in his throat, so he kept answering Angel with silent nods and short grunts. Several times he did that, until she blew out a breath. “I need some time to think,” he told her.

  “Last time you acted like this, you was about to get arrested,” she said.

  “Dub’s not getting arrested,” said Ida May.

  Jeb told Ida May to go and help Lucky. She got up, but her bottom lip quivered and she sniffled all the way down the hallway.

  Jeb mouthed, “I’m sorry, Ida May,” but the words stayed cooped up inside him.

  “Have you talked to Miss Coulter today? She might could help with whatever it is that’s bothering you,” said Angel.

  “Fern can’t help me. Don’t know that anyone can.”

  “Except God, you mean.”

  Jeb did not answer right off. “God has either put me here or maybe the Devil,” he said. It seemed cruel, no matter how he had arrived at this desolate situation. He did not know how to shepherd a flock that bit and butted at one another and at him. The Scriptures told him one thing—that we are many souls, but of one bread, one body—but the body led him to believe otherwise.

  “Does Frank Pella have anything to do with it?” asked Angel.

  “Frank Pella, Oz, Louie Williamson, Will Honeysack, George Maynard, people I’ve never met. The whole town, maybe.” It came to him that he might be without the aid of any friend at all, not any one person who could right wrongs.

  Lucky came into the room, bouncing Myrtle, laughing, and saying that Myrtle was beautiful and that she had never seen such a pretty child, and smart, she added. Lucky sat with her baby on the sofa, dressed in the newly buttoned dress that made her look older, her hair pulled back and making ringlets around the crown. She had made the leap from fourteen to womanhood without the help of a single person. “I’m going back to school somehow,” she said. “I’m going to teach, I’ve decided.” Since no one seemed to be paying her any mind, she told Myrtle of her plans, referring to herself as “your mother.”

  A tear slipped down Angel’s cheek.

  “I don’t want you to cry,” said Jeb. “Hold fast and it will all work out.” He wanted to believe it.

  The sanctuary had one electric light in the entry, a dim yellow light that cast long atticlike shadows from the front door to the pulpit. Jeb waited in the shadow of the lectern, not wanting to be the last girl to arrive at the party.

  Sam Patton parked his Chevy next to the church sign. He took one draw on his cigarette and stomped it out on the stone walkway. He paced out front, looking down the church drive and toward the road. He finally tramped up the church steps, opening the door, and then stopping. He asked who was there and Jeb said, “Your minister, Sam.”

  Arnell Ketcherside parked and came in behind Sam. He said quietly to Sam, “I thought this was board members only.”

  “So did I,” said Sam.

  “Will informed me of this gathering.”

  Sam and Arnell made an awkward pair, waiting halfway inside and outside. Jeb bid them to come inside and they finally did, but they took a seat on the back pew. Will and Floyd arrived. Will entered slowly, like a man not wanting to enter a funeral parlor.

  “Will, we agreed that we should meet first as a board only,” said Sam.

  “You agreed, Sam. Truth is, Jeb lives out back. How you going to explain all our vehicles parked out in front of the church?” asked Will.

  “I guess he’s right,” said Arnell. He took off his hat and approached Jeb, his right hand extended.

  Jeb thanked him and said, “Gracie always taught me that if I was to lead this flock, that I had to take the reins. You all swore me in by the laying on of hands. I’m entrusted to lead, so from now on, I lead these meetings.”

  “I second that motion,” said Will.

  “Now hold on, here. Will, he can’t step in and take over,” said Sam. “He don’t follow rules of order or nothing of the like.”

  “I never saw a race horse running backward, led by
its own flank,” said Will. “Reverend, I’m all ears.”

  Jeb started out with a prayer. He offered Sam the first say.

  Sam bristled. “Ever since you started trying to mix not only your own household, but this church, we’ve had nothing but harassment. It wasn’t but just this morning that every board member each unlocked our business establishments to find vandals had attacked us in the night. None of this happened before. We have a right to lead quiet lives, like the Scriptures say.”

  “No such Scripture, Sam, but go on,” said Jeb.

  “Next thing you know, our young people will start losing the morals we’ve taught them and the whole town will go to the degenerates. You seen that dancing club outside of Hope, Cotton Club or some such?” Sam asked.

  Jeb didn’t say either way.

  “Nazareth will go the way of reprobates if we don’t get a handle on this now before it all falls into a kafuffle. That’s all I have to say about matters,” said Sam.

  Jeb gave the floor to Arnell, who only agreed with Sam. “Floyd, you have the floor, if you like,” said Jeb.

  “Evelene and me have worked hard to keep the Woolworth’s going throughout this Depression. When we found rocks through our windows this morning, it scared us both. I’m not afraid to admit I’m scared. It seems to me we have no choice but to live separate, keep to our kind, they keep to their own kind. If we upset the apple cart, here’s proof of what happens; things get out of kilter. You can’t upset the natural order, Reverend, or we all pay.” He kept spinning the brim of his hat around his fingers. “I’m done, I guess.”

  Will said, “I’d like to give my time to Reverend Nubey.”

  Jeb invited the men to sit along the first and second pew. He said, “Floyd, mind explaining ‘natural order’?”

  “The way I see it, life is lived orderly, like God puts us where we belong. We get out of the natural order, then we blow everything to kingdom come,” said Floyd.

  “Makes sense,” said Arnell.

  “Floyd, you think the church people thought Christ was blowing everything to kingdom come, what with him going off and having dinner with people not of his own kind, mixing and mingling with—what was it you called those kind—‘degenerates’?”

  “Jesus was a peacemaker,” said Floyd.

  “‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword,’” said Jeb.

  “That’s Shakespeare, right?” asked Arnell.

  “Shut up, Arnell!” said Sam.

  “If you’re asking me to resign as your minister for taking in castaway kids, I can’t. Show me my wrongdoing and I’ll resign,” said Jeb.

  Will gave each man another opportunity to voice his opinion. He said to Jeb, “Let it be said that the elders of Church in the Dell find no wrongdoing in the life of our minister.”

  Sam got up and left. Arnell followed him, asking Sam what had just happened. Floyd and Will shook Jeb’s hand and Floyd left for home.

  “If they want to find wrongdoing, Jeb, you know they will, don’t you?” asked Will.

  “All I wanted tonight was some time, Will.” Jeb told him he would lock up and shut off the lights.

  He went back to the parsonage and waited for each child to disappear down the hallway and fall quiet. He lay in bed, staring out the window after all the children had fallen asleep. He troubled over what he should do with his borrowed time.

  22

  THE SUNDAY CROWD HAD THINNED BY AT LEAST two families a week for the three weeks surrounding Christmas, but typically picked up again by mid January. No crop needed tending and the boredom of winter swept the every-other-Sunday-goers through the door, if for no other reason, but that of having nothing to do in the cold weather.

  Jeb needed at least another half hour of study before opening his message. Myrtle screamed from five on, rousing the rest of the household. Willie, wrapped in a blanket, walked through the house with Ida May hunkering underneath the tail of the thing for warmth. Jeb fired up the coals in the potbellied parlor stove. Lucky stroked Myrtle’s bottom lip with a warmed bottle nipple. She finally grunted and took it.

  “I’m going in early,” Jeb told Lucky. He kept a plain face, not giving away any of his morning plan. “Wake Angel and be sure you’re all to church early and not late.”

  “I wasn’t going, though. You can’t mean me,” said Lucky.

  “I do mean you and your baby too,” said Jeb. “You got something new to wear. I call that without excuse.”

  He felt Lucky watching him cross the yard.

  An hour skimmed by and the church filled up, all except for Sam and Greta Patton. Arnell and his missus came in with their sons, two of whom Jeb had baptized last summer in White Oak Lake. Will and Freda, Floyd and Evelene, all took a seat and then came Fern. She wore something new, but in her usual manner, she wore a pair of older sensible shoes. Red and blue flowers on white fabric gave her the look of one of the high-school girls who campaigned for Pony Fabrey during the last mayoral election. Not that the teens had given a flip about the mayor’s election, but the young volunteers had enjoyed the benefits of the free lemonade and fried chicken at the summer picnic.

  Angel walked in with Lucky, who held Myrtle. Lucky wore the dress she had finagled from Angel and had done up her hair in one of those knots that the women were all asking about down at the Clip and Curl. She held her baby close, allowing Myrtle’s face to peek out of a pink blanket, not awkwardly mishandling her as she had done in the past, but assuredly, like a fourteen-year-old Mary who knows that her child was sent by angels. Her eyes and her mouth firm, dogged, looked wise and like a girl who knows things other people have yet to figure out.

  The ladies parted and followed their husbands habitually to customary pews, and none of them greeted Lucky or made a fuss over the baby as they customarily made over infants. Lucky made eye contact with several women, smiling whether or not anyone reciprocated.

  Angel scooted down next to Fern and Lucky sat next to Angel.

  Jeb asked for every head to bow and every eye to close before thoughts melted like lard in a skillet, sizzling and popping with opinion.

  He asked that attention be drawn to Mark 10, and talked about the Sons of Thunder, James and John, and of their desire to sit next to God in heaven. The rulers over the Gentiles, he said, lord it over them, and Jeb gave the definition of supremacy—the desire to dominate. Jeb read verses 44 and 45 and asked God to teach him the way of servanthood.

  It did not thunder at that moment, but some later remembered it that way, even though the sky had blued better than any day in January.

  The church doors opened and a timid woman came through. She wore a tall, wide-brimmed hat the color of daffodils and a thick band decorated with a couple of flowers, though fake, but that yellow hat gave her the look of blooming in the doorway. She led two others, two handsome young people, a young woman and a young man, who walked together and behind her.

  Jeb’s eyes lifted and he smiled and nodded at them. Lucky turned and silently mouthed, “Momma.”

  Before Lucky’s mother could lead her two progeny to the last pew, Jeb came down onto the floor and walked down the aisle, where he met them.

  Some of the faces changed from Sunday ecstasy to something not as lovely or fitting for a church face.

  “Are you Vera Blessed?” Jeb asked.

  Her timidity did not allow her to speak, not with all of those eyes on her. She looked up and down the aisle, and when her gaze met with Lucky’s, she teetered back on her heels. She pointed at Myrtle. “My granddaughter?” she asked.

  Lucky wiped her eyes and she nodded at her mother.

  “Vera is a sister in Christ,” said Jeb. “I invited her and her two children, Jewel and Ruben, as a sort of symbol of this morning’s sermon.” Jeb took Vera’s hand, it was gloved in white, and led her up the aisle. Jeb invited Vera to take a seat in the front row. Lucky followed, holding Myrtle close. She sat next to her mother. Jewel and Ruben took up the remaining spac
e on the pew next to their youngest sister.

  Jeb kept to his sermon. As he finished Mark’s text, he closed in prayer. Will and Freda came up front and knelt in silent prayer. Then they turned and Freda greeted Vera and told her what lovely children she had reared. Lucky sniffled. Her sister held out her hands and she took her niece in her arms for the first time.

  Angel got up out of her seat and came to the front too. Floyd and Evelene came forward and exchanged pleasantries with Vera. Lucky and Angel hugged, even with all the better-looking boys calling them silly girls. They walked down the church aisle, showing off Myrtle to the churchwomen who were willing to speak.

  Church dismissed on its own, but hardly anyone left.

  Vera said to Jeb, “Reverend, remember to pray for my husband, John, that he’ll forgive what’s happened and let Lucky come home with our grandchild.” She looked around the room until her eyes fell on her boy, Ruben. He walked out the church doors without saying much. “Pray for him too,” she said. “Ruben’s got lots of turmoil in his soul over Lucky.”

  “I know we’re not over all this, Sister Blessed. I was hoping that today might start something better than what we had yesterday.”

  “I’d say it’s some better,” said Vera. She moved politely through the church folk in search of her little girl.

  Fern baptized Jeb with kisses up until late Sunday. “You did the right thing inviting the Blesseds to church.”

  Jeb walked her to her door. He said, “I want to come in.”

  “You ought to,” she told him.

  She put coffee on to brew. Jeb dropped his hat on a chair and followed her into the kitchen. Fern put her arms around him and kissed him again. Jeb stayed for coffee. “I’ll see you tomorrow after school.” He listened to the quiet of her house and thought of the ruckus going on back at the parsonage. “Maybe I’ll stay a minute more.”

  He kissed Fern in the doorway, not noticing how bitter cold the night had gotten.

  Jeb woke up with the sun in his eyes and thoughts about Fern. That moment lasted long enough for thoughts to creep in about Church in the Dell. Good intentions could sour over a single night. Not everyone had accepted the Blesseds, of that he was certain.