For Time and Eternity (4 page)

* * *

Later that morning I knew Nathan Fox had been right about one thing. I was catching a cold. By the time Mr. Teague rang the first bell calling us into class, I had a tiny tickle at the top of my throat, and when the younger children were dismissed for their first recess, it had grown to a licking flame. I could not concentrate on the letters of Thomas Jefferson, and while Michael Bostwick stood at the front of the classroom giving his impassioned recitation, I could do little more than rest my fevered brow on my hands and quietly wish to die.

At noon, I begged Mr. Teague to dismiss me to go home. He touched his own fat hand to my face and, satisfied with its temperature, released me with instructions to read the next twenty pages in our history text. I didn’t even bring the book home. Instead, I launched myself down the path, my lunch pail dangling from listless fingers. Befuddled as my mind was, I couldn’t help but hear Nathan’s words with every step.
This is where he talked about children. This is where he spoke of persecution. And of a prophet. A new prophet.

Seemed we had new preachers in our church all the time. Men in the midst of a journey, stopping for a week or so to thunder out the promise of a fiery eternity in hell for the condemned. But there was no such fire in Nathan’s voice. Only warmth. Nothing called down from heaven, but some kind of inner ember. I touched my cheek where he’d touched me, fascinated by the heat there. But of course, that was due to my cold. At least partly.

Soon I was at the place where he met me. I lingered there, wondering if, by some chance, he might return. Might be waiting for me, even. But of course he wasn’t. I staggered onto our property and braced myself against the stones of my father’s wall as a wave of dizziness caught me. For a moment, everything was lost. Twirled around and ripped away. I could only hear my mother’s voice coming closer, shaking with the impact of her running footfalls. Then she was here, one arm wrapped around my waist. Her cool palm on my forehead.

“Oh, Mama. I’m sick.”

And safely home, I closed my eyes.

Chapter 4

I slept the rest of that day and through the night, my dreams peppered with images of Nathan Fox, my body trembling with unrelenting chills. The next morning I made a halfhearted attempt to rouse myself for school, but Mama would have none of it.

“You’re still burning with fever.” Her soft voice seemed to come from far away as she touched a cool rag to my face.

My throat felt too swollen and sore to reply. The simple nodding of my head proved painful. Nestling deep into the mattress, I pulled the blanket up to my nose and closed my eyes. No doubt Mama thought I was sleeping. She said a few soothing words before going downstairs to make me a cup of tea. Listless and lethargic as I felt, though, sleep would not come. My wakefulness allowed me to craft new dreams of Nathan. When I slept, he was always just out of reach. I’d see him on the path, but every step I took drove him one more step away. But in these waking hours, I could control him—make him stop and wait. Turn to me and reach out. I could intertwine my fingers in his, have him pull me close. My visions were clear, if fevered, but incomplete. I didn’t know what a boy would do once a girl was in his arms. And Nathan was more than a boy. He was a man. I knew even less of that.

It was quite early in the morning. My father’s voice still rumbled in the kitchen. If I were going to school, it would be at least an hour before that appointed time. I heard the kettle rattle on the stove and imagined Nathan sitting next to a nearby fire. My own stomach growled for lack of food, and I wondered if he had eaten yet. My mind etched his face, down to the crease at the corner of his mouth when he smiled, and I burned to see it again in flesh before me. Would he be waiting again at the path? Would he worry when I didn’t arrive? The thought of it made me want to swing my feet over the side of the bed. Put on my dress and shoes and somehow find the strength to leave this house. But my body groaned at the slightest stirring, and my mother’s appearance at the door bearing a tray of steaming grits and weak tea stifled the very notion.

* * *

I awoke later to a broken fever and a high noon sun. Like someone washed up by some sort of tide, I was soaked clear through, as was my blanket. Determined now, I climbed out of bed and shivered at the coolness of the wet nightclothes against my skin. My mother hummed from somewhere downstairs, but my cocked ear caught no sign of anyone else.

“Mama?” My dry throat cracked with the weak effort, but there was no pain in speaking. I licked my lips and called again.

The humming stopped and steady steps brought her into my room, wiping her hands on her apron.

“My fever broke.”

“So I see.” It occurred to me that I must not have been nearly as sick as I imagined, because there was no hint of blessed relief in her voice. I had clear snatches in waking memory of her sitting at my bedside, clutching my hand, whispering prayers. But she now seemed so removed from a woman given to vigil that I felt a little silly for having called her.

“My, um, gown is wet?”

“Let’s get you into another.” She went to her knees by the trunk at the foot of my bed and opened it. After some rummaging around, she came up with a fresh, if wrinkled, gown and another sheet and blanket. I changed while she stripped the bed.

“Why don’t you go down to the kitchen,” Mama said. “Do you some good to get out of this room. Let the mattress air out.”

“Is Papa downstairs?” I didn’t want him to see me in my gown.

“He’s out with the cows. Takin’ them down by the meadow.”

“Fine.” I crossed over to my bureau, but froze as a movement outside the window caught my eye. Not believing, I leaned closer, resting my head against the glass. There he was, Nathan Fox, leaning against my father’s makeshift stone wall, twirling his hat in his hands. Just then he looked up. Toward the house, but not at me. Not yet.

“That’s a good idea,” Mama said, busy with the ticking. “Why don’t you open the window a bit. Let in some of that fresh breeze.”

“All right.”

He didn’t notice me until I’d slid the window up nearly halfway. And when he did, he slammed his hat on his head and took two running steps toward the house.

“No!” It was out of my mouth before I could think. Certainly not loud enough for him to hear me clear across the yard, yet somehow he knew to stop. But he didn’t back away. He just stood there, staring. An expression on his face I couldn’t read.

“What was that?” Mama stretched her small frame across the bed, attempting to fit the clean muslin sheet over the far corner of the mattress. I left the window and went to help her, smoothing the cool material at the opposite corner and tucking it under the foot of the ticking.

“I—I was just surprised to see how much of the day has passed. I can’t believe I slept so late into the afternoon.”

“It’s the best medicine.” She stood back to admire her work before unfurling a fresh, clean quilt over the sheet. “But let’s see if we can keep you up for a while. You didn’t get a chance to read your Scripture last night. How about we do that now? Your father will be so pleased to see you keep up. Even in times of illness. Scripture can be such a comfort.”

“My head hurts, Mama.” Which it did. “I don’t think I could concentrate on reading right now.” Inching steps took me back to the window. He was gone, and it felt like I was taking the first clear breath since seeing him.

“Oh.” She smoothed one hand over and over a corner, and I felt a new weakness, an overwhelming need of her. My head and heart had been spinning for days, and I longed to pour both out to her. I couldn’t, of course. Not everything. Nothing about Nathan Fox and our walks to school and the way he touched my face and the hope I had when I saw him standing at the wall. But she was, after all, a woman. And so, apparently, was I.

“But maybe you could read it to me?” I offered. “We could sit together, in the parlor.”

“Well, I don’t know ’bout that.” Mama stooped and gathered the soiled linens into one big armful. “There’s so much to be done yet. I haven’t even started supper.”

“Just one chapter.” Still unused to talking, I had to cough before I could continue. “We could have tea and biscuits in the parlor. Like a regular social.”

“I suppose there’s time before your father gets back,” she said, standing. “I’ll drop these on the back porch and get the water on.”

Alone again, I went to the window and leaned clear out, craning my neck to see if I could get even a glimpse. Nothing. But even his absence held a hint of promise.

* * *

“Well, aren’t we a couple of fine ladies in the middle of the afternoon?” Mama sipped her tea, eyebrows arched high over the steam.

“I suppose we are.” My own tea was cooler, tempered with milk.

“Now,” Mama said, setting her cup on the small table beside her and lifting our Bible into her lap, “do you remember where you were?”

I nodded. “First Samuel. Chapter 3.”

Mama turned to the page and started to read, but I had to stop her after the first verse.

“What does he mean by ‘there was no open vision’?”

She thought for a moment before answering. “It says the word of the Lord was ‘precious,’ so I suppose it means that not everybody could understand it. Or hear it. God was only speaking to a certain few.”

Satisfied, I sipped my drink as she continued to read. After the first verse, it became a familiar story, that of young Samuel being called from his bed by the Lord. Only Samuel didn’t know it was the Lord at first and thought it was the old priest Eli. Mama read it like it was a story, not the Bible, and I wished for a minute that I could do all of my Bible readings this way. Or even just sit and let her tell me the stories without reading at all. Surely she knew them all by heart. Since I didn’t have the page in front of me, I couldn’t count down to the end of the chapter, and I was somewhat startled when her voice silenced.

“That’s it?”

“One chapter at a time, Camilla.”

I knew it was time for me to answer the question of what this chapter teaches about being a better Christian. But I wasn’t ready to think about that just yet. Instead, I wondered about what Nathan said about following a new prophet. Samuel was a prophet because the Lord spoke right to him.

“How come in the Bible God is always talking to people, but now he never does?”

Mama thought for a minute, her eyes turned up to the ceiling, her hand running softly over the open page. “It was an older time, I guess. Closer to Creation. Maybe he was nearer. Maybe people needed to hear him because they didn’t have the Bible to read.”

“Has he ever spoken like that to you, Mama? right out loud?”

“No, darling. Not like that. Not right out loud.”

“But he could if he wanted to?”

“Of course. He can do anything.”

“Then why doesn’t he? Wouldn’t it be easier if he did? Then we could just listen to him and know what to do.”

Mama laughed. A treasure so rare I wanted to keep it forever. “Your father and I tell you what to do every day, and sometimes you still find ways to be disobedient. That’s why we have the Scriptures. No matter what our parents—or anybody else—tells us, we’ll always hear God’s voice in these pages. This is where he tells us what we should and shouldn’t do.”

“But the world has changed a lot since those times.”

“Not so much,” Mama said. “Not in ways that matter. People still seek him, and he still loves us. Remember that, Camilla, all your days. If nothing else, know that he loves you. And because you love him, you must obey his teachings.”

I don’t remember ever feeling as close to my mother as I did that afternoon. Like the whole world just stopped for a moment to let us talk to each other. Sometimes I think of how things might have turned out so different if we’d had a chance to do that more. If I could have known every day of my life that we could slip into our parlor and talk about God’s love and the world’s frustrations over a cup of tea, I might not have taken the path I did.

Still, I tucked my feet up tighter beneath me, not brave enough to ask what was really on my heart. I knew she and Papa would disapprove of my morning walks with Nathan. Partly because he was an older boy and a stranger to our town. But mostly because he was one of the Mormons. And I knew they didn’t approve of the Mormons, but I didn’t know why, exactly. So far, in all of my Bible readings, I couldn’t remember anything that would make Nathan a bad person. Mama had just said that God could still speak to people, just as he had to Samuel, and it seemed Nathan believed the same. She was looking at me now with such an open face, it seemed she was more a sister than a mother, and all the loneliness I carried around with being the only child in this house dropped away.

“Do you think they believe his teachings?”

“Who?” She looked confused, since I forgot I hadn’t said all of my thoughts out loud.

“Those people by the river. The Mormons.”

Just like that, her eyes narrowed and her whole face pinched up. “No, Camilla. They don’t.”

“But they have a prophet who heard God’s voice.”

“He’s a false prophet.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because their teachings are wrong.”

“How? What do they—”

“Enough about this.”

“How can you be sure that—”

“I said enough.” There she was, my mother again. Small and tight, her tea untouched beside her. “Now, what verse do you want to record in your journal?”

“I don’t know.” Already the story of Samuel was lost. I leaned forward and put my cup on the little table in front of the sofa. “My head hurts too much to remember.” Which was mostly true. “Can you read it again?”

“Don’t be silly. There’s not enough time. I’ll choose one for you.” She ran her finger down the columns of words and made an impatient clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth. “Here, verse 19. ‘And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.’”

The brief respite of health began to fade, and I could barely muster the strength to pick up my journal, let alone open and write in it. True, a good portion of my weakness was nothing more than disinterest—disappointment, really. Still, I managed to sound pitiful when I told Mama I couldn’t bring myself to note down the words.

“Can you write it for me?”

She glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen before answering. “Very well; hand me the pen.”

I complied, then sat back to watch her write, fearing for the paper as she bore down on it. Although Mama could read with a practiced air, writing seemed much more difficult for her. In fact, I could recall only a handful of occasions when I’d seen her do so. Her eyes darted constantly from the Bible’s printed page to the empty page on the journal, and her brow took on such a look of concentration I feared the furrows would be etched there like stone. The only sound in the room was that of the scratching pen. Watching Mama write was as laborious as writing myself, and I looked away, choosing instead to stare at my own hands listless in my lap.

“There,” she said when the scratching stopped. “Now, how can this verse help you be a better Christian?”