by Darrel Bird
Part 3
Jena Blankenship was a petite woman with black hair, dancing hazel eyes, and a pretty face. Her nose turned up a little. She had the beginning of crow’s feet around her eyes and a streak of gray in her hair, but she was still a beautiful woman, even after four children.
She adored the children and Joe, and she felt as though she was not complete unless they were all there with her. Her family and her home were her life. After Joe had left and the kids were playing out back, Jena walked back into the now-empty house. She already missed Joe. She began missing him the minute he drove away, and she knew she was in for a long run by herself.
She knew Joe tried hard, but it seemed like things had gotten worse financially since the day they had “got saved.” They gave to the church, and she had even given a tithe. But things never seemed to go smoothly for more than a while, and now she was going to lose her home again. They didn’t have much equity in the place, and she knew that the bank would probably foreclose on it before they could sell it. Not many people were in the market for a house twenty miles up a crooked mountain road.
She even missed Boomer, even though the neighbor down the road had accused him of killing two of her cats. The neighbor had about a half-dozen cats on her place, and Jena wouldn’t put it past Boomer, if he could catch one of them. He hated cats and loved to chase them. The week before, he had chased one of them through a crack in some boards. However, he didn’t fit through the crack, and he couldn’t get stopped before he ploughed into the wall.
Jena smiled at the thought of the dog. He loved the kids, and the kids played with him constantly. Of course they had started out wanting to bring him in to sleep with them, but Joe had said, “No, the dog is too big for the house.” The kids knew by the tone of his voice that this was final, so Boomer didn’t get to come into the house. Jena could tell when the school bus was bringing the kids from school, because Boomer would get up from where he slept in the backyard and amble up the short road to the school bus stop and wait. The kids would get off the bus, and here they would all come, Boomer running ahead as if to say, “Hey Mom, I found them!”
Jena felt that God was being unfair, and the longer she thought about it the more her faith weakened. She looked up and cried aloud, “God, do you even care?” However, the only reply her lonely heart received was the silence of the house.
She dried her eyes and walked into the kitchen to fix lunch for the kids. She had kept them out of school so they could see Joe off that morning. She opened the window, and called the kids in to eat.
Two days later, Jena was home alone when she got the call that Joe had been in an accident. He assured her he was fine, but she knew he would say that even if he were at death’s door.
“Oh, God, what is going to happen to us?” she cried. She had hung up the phone, lay across the empty bed, and wept until there were no more tears.