Nazareth's Song (18 page)

“God doesn’t always give us what we want right now. He likes to teach us things. We humans are a hardheaded lot. I guess he figures that we learn best under the weight of hard times and waiting.”

“You talk more about God now than you used to. I’m kind of sick of it, truth be told.”

“I’m not meaning to preach at you. But if you’d learn a thing or two, you’d not throw yourself at boys like Beck. Gracie says that we’re all like baby birds sitting in the nest with our beaks wide open. You know how Ida May wants to know everything we know, but if we try and explain the situation, she gets even madder? Her mind can’t get all that we want to give her yet. God does that for us. He’s so big and deep that he has to feed us a little of his wisdom at a time so we can grasp it. It’s like trying to fit an elephant into a funnel. But if we can learn just a bit of what he’s trying to tell us through the hard times, maybe some day we’ll understand him better.”

“It’s too late for a Sunday school lesson. I’m tired, Jeb.”

“I’m up, you’re up.”

“I’d like some more corn bread, please,” Angel told the waitress.

“You never answered my question about whether or not you fell into this much trouble at home.”

“I never ran away. My momma, she did the running away.”

“So you’re following her lead.”

“She never should have left us. Daddy only got messed up with that neighbor lady, Lana, because he was missing Momma.”

“Not to hear Willie tell it.”

“Willie doesn’t know nothing!”

“Willie says your momma left when she found out about Lana.”

“He’s mixed up about her, that’s all.”

“Angel, I only know that I’ve done all I can do with you. I can’t make you mind me or do right by me or your brother and sister. You never want to listen to me unless I’m agreeing with all you say. No telling what would have happened back at that lake if I hadn’t walked up. You’re too young to play house.”

“Tell it to the whole diner, Jeb.”

“Tomorrow, I’m telling Gracie that I can’t preach this coming Sunday. I’m taking you to Little Rock and helping you find your momma and Aunt Kate.”

“You’re getting rid of me. I saw it coming. If you wanted to do that, you should have let me run off with Beck.”

“I wouldn’t let my own daughter run off with the likes of Beck Hopper. I wouldn’t let you, either.”

“We can’t afford the gas for Little Rock.”

“Horace Mills offered me some delivery work. It pays good, or so he says.” He mulled over what he was fixing to say. “I’m taking him up on it in the morning. After he pays me, we’re leaving town. You best get up in the morning and pack up all your things.”

“What about Willie and Ida May?”

“Miss Coulter is watching them. Between her and Mellie Fogarty, they’ll keep those two in good company.”

“Aunt Kate won’t take me in.” Angel’s voice trembled. “She can’t.” She wiped both eyes and pushed aside her empty plate.

Jeb always ached when Angel cried. It was a seldom-seen occurrence, but when she cried it tore out his heart. “She has to try. I won’t leave you until you feel settled in, and maybe we’ll find work for you.”

“You’d give up preaching this week for me?”

“We don’t have a choice, do we?”

The waitress lifted the coffeepot above Jeb’s cup, but he covered it with one hand. “No more for me, ma’am.”

“More milk for you?” she asked Angel, but Angel shook her head. “I guess you’re glad to have your belly full again,” she said to Angel.

“It was good eats, ma’am.”

“You ought to thank your daddy for coming after you,” she said.

“He’s not my daddy.”

The waitress turned and stared at Jeb, her brows lifted in a puzzled stare.

“Here’s your money. I thank you for your help, ma’am.” Jeb paid out and headed for the door. He felt the woman’s eyes on him all the way out to the parking lot. When Angel climbed into the truck he said, “I wish I could have been your daddy. Maybe things would have turned out differently for you and your brother and sister. One day I’d like to deserve a daughter like you.”

He imagined for a moment a child at his knee, a little Fern with cotton silk hair and a mind of her own. The dream seemed to unfold inside him, his life and Fern’s joining and making another. They looked happy, like the fashionable husbands and wives in the moving pictures. “Maybe her life will be better than ours, Angel. But we haven’t been so bad together, you and me.”

“What kind of delivery, Jeb?”

“Bank business. Nothing you’d care to know about.”

He prayed he had not made Horace too angry to reconsider the delivery job. Gracie would simply have to understand.

The waitress had been right about the weather. November sleet covered every inch of ground and leaf before the sun had a chance to bloom across the Ouachita ridge. Jeb made Angel ride with him to the bank. He dropped by the school to tell Willie and Ida May that Angel had made it home safely the night before. Fern was standing out in the schoolyard ringing the bell. He did not see Beck’s truck anywhere. He asked Angel to wait in the truck and met Fern on the lawn.

“Looks like your little bird’s flown home,” she said.

“It was a long night. I found them parked along Carpenter Dam in Hot Springs.”

“Beck hasn’t shown up for school. Did you see him home too?” she asked.

“I was too afraid I’d kill him. I told him to go home and give what money he had back to his momma.” When he dropped by the Hopper place with the bank offer, he would ask Telulah if Beck had gotten home all right. But he would not worry over the boy any more than he would worry over Asa or the rest of his rowdy family.

“Willie and Ida May must have had full trust in you. They slept like lambs.”

“Fern, I need to ask you something. I’m taking Angel to Little Rock. I can’t see that I have a choice in the matter.”

“You want me to keep them? I’m happy to do it. Are you sure you want to take Angel away? She’s a handful, but she has been so happy with you.”

“I’m not her real daddy, and she knows it. One thing I can’t do is hope that she’ll ever pay me that kind of respect.”

“How long you think you’ll be gone?”

“Long enough to help her get settled. Once we talk their Aunt Kate into making room for them, I’ll come back for Willie and Ida May. Will you tell them for me?”

Fern agreed. “I guess we won’t get to hear your preaching this Sunday.”

“I haven’t told Reverend Gracie. I’ll tell him on my way out of town.”

“God’s laid a lot on you since you first came into town, Jeb Nubey. I’ve never seen a man work so hard as you to prove yourself to a town.”

“God’s patient with me. Maybe the townspeople of Nazareth will be too.” He did not read outright approval in her eyes, but she did seem to soften. She always softened when it came to the Welbys. “I’ll leave a message for you and the kids at Honeysack’s if I can find a place to make a call in Little Rock.”

“I’ll check in with Will and Freda, then, in a day or two,” she said.

Before Jeb had closed the truck door, Fern waved and called out, “Take care.” He smiled at her, and for once it did not seem to make her angry with him.

Fern watched him drive all the way down Long’s Pond Road.

Angel waited out in the truck while he dropped into the bank to ask if Mr. Mills would see him. He had waited only a moment when Mills’s secretary invited him to step into the banker’s office.

Mills did not stand when Jeb walked in. He held a parcel tied with twine. He pitched it onto his desk in the direction of Jeb. “Ready to deliver our offer, Reverend?”

“You act as if you’ve been waiting for me, Mr. Mills.”

“I’ll admit I waited longer than I’d thought to. Take a seat. You look awful.”

“I had to go off looking for Angel. Drove half the night. You were right about the Hoppers, Mr. Mills. Asa’s boy ran off with Angel. It liked to have scared me to death. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t found her when I did.”

“Bad news, those Hoppers. One thing I have is a good judge of character. You should go home after you deliver the documents and get some rest.”

“I’m driving Angel to Little Rock. That’s why I’m here. I need the work to pay for the gas.”

“Winona and I told you we’d take care of you getting those kids back to their momma. Winona thinks the world of you, although I sometimes question her judgment in men.” He laughed and held up both hands. “No offense. Just joshing.”

“Miss Mills is a fine young woman. You’ve done well by her, Mr. Mills. Do I need to wait for Mrs. Hopper to read these documents or do I simply hand them to her?”

“Good question, Reverend.” Mills opened the parcel. “You get Mrs. Hopper to sign on the dotted line of this document today, and I’ll see you’re paid a bonus.” He shoved another envelope across the table, a long bulky package that looked like the one he used to pay his tithe to the church. “Here’s your first installment, the money you gave back to me. Also, here’s the money I told you to give to Mrs. Hopper for food. I’m not a louse, you know.” He laid down the ten dollars.

Jeb tried not to show the discomfort he felt when he thought of asking Telulah to sign Mills’s offer. “I’m grateful you saved the job for me, Mr. Mills. I could not get the Welbys back to their momma without it.”

“This envelope has your wages. This extra here is for your trip.” Horace pulled out several bills and held them out to Jeb.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re building a life for yourself, Reverend. Most people sit around letting life happen to them, like all they have to do is lift their feet. That’s why so many folk are getting swept away by this Depression. But I’ve been watching you. You studied under Gracie; you took in kids that didn’t belong to you and gave them a home. Now you’re cutting loose the things that are holding you back from what you want. You plan for life, and life treats you sweetly—mark my words. Nazareth’s Church in the Dell’s been needing a man like you behind our pulpit. Gracie’s getting old and can’t see beyond tomorrow. You can take this little church places and build a life for yourself, Depression or not.”

Mills made Jeb sound as though he were fulfilling a part of his own master plan for life. Truth be told, he had not thought much beyond tomorrow. He took the money and the parcel and left the bank.

“Where we going to make this delivery, Jeb?” Angel eyed the parcel in his lap as they motored down Main. “Is it far? Sounds like an easy job to me.”

“Will and Freda have been needing some chores done down around the store. I won’t be long. I’ll leave you in Freda’s care until I get back.”

“Chores for Mrs. Honeysack?”

“I don’t want to hear any of your lip, Angel.”

“You don’t trust me anymore,” Angel said.

“Like I said, I won’t be long.”

“You’re not going to tell me where you’re going. I can’t go with you. Something’s up. Mr. Mills ask you to do something shady?”

“Not at all. Me and shady don’t dance together no more. You know better than that.”

Jeb left her at the front door of Honeysack’s Grocery. As far as he was concerned, Angel had been in too much of his business all along. She would never have to know about the bank’s business with the Hoppers.

He felt a strange uneasiness seep inside him again, even though he had accepted honest work. He decided that his guilty past would always follow him around and cause him to question even the best of motives. He turned left on Pine at Sewell and headed the truck toward the ten-mile stretch of road leading out to the Hopper farm. Today would be a day of good news for Telulah Hopper. That made him an ambassador in God’s eyes.

The Hopper place, like a speck of gravy on the horizon, might have been a place overlooked, like no one had lived in the shanty for years. It had fallen into the kind of disrepair seen only in a remote foreign hellhole. Past crop rows defined the landscape in strips of brown, shriveled twigs. Soiled cottony tufts clung to the brittle cotton plant shafts as meaningless survivors of the dust storms that had blown across Oklahoma and into Arkansas without remorse.

Two hounds loped alongside the truck until Jeb brought it to a stop right in front of the portals of the unpainted shack. He reached outside the truck and patted both dogs until they rolled onto their backs for more attention, then stepped out of the truck expecting to see Clark Hopper’s rifle pointed straight into his face. Instead, Telulah appeared in the doorway with a bowl of apples. She welcomed Jeb with a smile, exactly as Mills had said she would.

“Mrs. Hopper, did your boy Beck make it home last night?”

“I liked to have whupped him for running off with your girl like that, Reverend. He’s been raised to know better. I got him out in the barn with his brother Clark cleaning out the bad hay. Seems like we don’t have much use for the barn now, but it’s best to keep those boys busy.” She laughed, but her eyes retained a spark of regret. “Keeps them out of trouble.”

Whenever she said her
s
’s or
th
’s her tongue protruded through the gap left by her missing front teeth.

Jeb picked up the parcel and toted it along with him.

“I’m glad to know Angel made it home safe. I don’t figure Beck would have been gone long. He can’t make a living on his own yet. He wants to larn how to fix automobiles like his brother Clark, but Clark says he cain’t do nothin’ yet but dream about it. I guess that’s a blessing in disguise, as they say.”

“Mrs. Hopper, I’m here with some business I want to tell you about,” said Jeb. He felt uneasy again.

“Business with me? What business would I have with the church?” she asked. She laid the bowl of pared apples on the porch railing.

“Not church business. Bank business.”

Her smile faded. “You workin’ for Mills now too, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t be out here if I didn’t think it would help you all out. I know Asa can’t help you from jail. You can’t make a living without your husband around.”

Telulah seated herself on the front steps as though all of the breath inside her had been let out. She rested her face on one hand, her eyes lifted like the two hounds’ heads that panted at her side.

“If you don’t mind, open this up and see what the bank has to offer you.”