Chapter 19
Salem
Jessie almost cried with relief when she saw the Sergeant’s face peering into the Penalty Box. “Your sentence is up,” he said. “Come on out, if you can do it without stepping on somebody.” The joviality in his voice seemed strained as he helped them back into the room. What had happened obviously wasn’t a joke.
“It was three kids from the neighborhood,” the Sergeant said in answer to their avalanche of questions. “I think they saw the car leave, and figured the house was empty. They broke the window on the kitchen door to get in. When Chris and Ben confronted them in the hall, two ran and one took a swing at Chris.”
“Is he okay?” they asked at once.
“He’s in the kitchen, getting fussed over,” the Sergeant told them with a pointed roll of his eyes. And indeed he was, watching in the wall mirror with modest pride as Mom and Mrs. Scroggins patched a tiny cut on his cheek.
“Was the bad guy wearing brass knuckles?” asked a wide-eyed Moe.
“Just a ring,” Chris allowed. “But he packed a punch behind it.”
“Did you turn the other cheek?” inquired Katie piously.
“I didn’t have time,” Chris said non-committally. “As soon as he swung on me, Ben went for him with a football tackle.”
Moe turned incredulously to Ben. “You play football?”
“Um, no,” the older boy replied sheepishly. “I kinda missed him, sort of,” he admitted, adjusting the ice pack on his head. “My tackle got about half of him, and half of the hall table. You know, the one that used to have the porcelain sculpture of Moses crossing the Red Sea?”
“That would be the one in pieces on the floor,” added the Sergeant, “but don’t worry about it, Ben. I’m proud of you boys for defending the others. Which, by the way, is the only situation in which I’ll tolerate fisticuffs or rough-housing, so nobody get any ideas.” He shook his finger at them with mock severity.
Just then the police officer arrived, and Chris and Ben made their report to him. “I know two of the guys,” Chris said, and gave their names to the officer. “The one who hit me I don’t know, but he was big and mean. At least six feet and one-eighty, arms like tree limbs.”
“That’s right,” Ben agreed. “He was like a gorilla.”
“I saw him running away,” Mrs. Sparrow put in. “He was about five-and-a-half and one-fifty. Sorry, Chris.”
“Well, he looked big,” Chris sulked. “But I guess anybody does when they’re about to cream you.”
After the policeman left, the Sergeant looked over at Mrs. Sparrow and Mrs. Scroggins, and suggested they all sit down in the living room to talk. “I can’t think of a more appropriate time,” he began, “to share with you all what we’ve been discussing with Mrs. Scroggins. In fact, this break-in was like an answer to the questions we’ve been considering. Let me explain.
“I’ve never felt that the city is a good place in which to raise a family, particularly not a large city like this one. There’s not enough room to get out into nature and away from the negative influences of urban culture. Also,” he grimaced, “there’s the safety issue, with bored young men like those three nogoodniks walking around the streets looking for trouble.
“We’ve been thinking about moving the family to a bigger place in the country. Particularly, we’ve been talking to Mrs. Scroggins about making some arrangement regarding the farm that she owns – the one where we went camping.”
“There are two houses on the farm,” Mrs. Scroggins took up, “the main house, which is a split level big enough for your whole family, and the guest house. Ben and I would live in the smaller house, and you folks would occupy the big one. That way we’d all have our privacy, but be able to walk back and forth and see each other freely. Mr. Sparrow would own and manage the farm.”
“And Mrs. Scroggins,” the Sergeant continued, “would be on hand to show us how farming is done, as our total knowledge right now would fill a milk pail roughly halfway.
“Now,” said the Sergeant carefully, “this is not an announcement of what we’re going to do. It is a request for comment. I want to know not only what each of you thinks of the idea, but what you think God is saying to your heart about it. Chris?”
“You know my vote,” Chris burst out with excitement. “Yes, yes, yes. It’s too good to be true.”
“Amen!” Moe shouted fervently, to the surprise of no one.
“Ben has already talked to his Nana,” the Sergeant said, “and of course he is in favor as well. Katie?”
Katie thought very carefully for a moment. “I say,” she finally announced with a dramatic pause, “yea.”
All eyes now turned to Jessie, who up until now had been the fly in every batch of buttermilk. If she readily agreed to leaving her comfortable urbanite lifestyle, then the change in her was even more real and radical than anyone knew. Her response was a simple question, but the fact that she was asking it took them all by surprise.
“What about your job, Dad? You like it so much.”
“My job.” The Sergeant blinked, nonplussed. “Well, thanks for thinking of me. I may be able to stay on by telecommuting, but even if not, my job is only a secondary concern. We have savings, plus a certain amount of income from bonds and those two commercial properties in town. Anyway, whatever happens, God will take care of us. You guys are my number one priority”
“I know you love working at Allred,” Jessie reasoned. “If you can give that up for what’s good for the family, then I can give up the mall and the stuff that goes with it. Let’s do this.”
“Thank you for that,” the Sergeant said. “But let’s not make any final decisions hastily, especially when we’re all wound up from the excitement earlier. We should pray about this and then sleep on it. No, Moe, you don’t need to bow your head yet – we’ll pray tonight in devotions. Right now it’s back to school.”
A collective groan went up. “Kidding!” the Sergeant laughed mischievously. “You all have the rest of the day off to recuperate from this morning. But try to be listening for the Lord’s voice as you go about your day, not just entertaining your own thoughts and desires one way or the other.”
The vote that night was predictably the same – only more so, Jessie and Katie having caught the contagious excitement of the boys. As for the boys themselves, no amount of prayer, Bible reading, or meditation could have convinced them that the move to the farm was anything but the highest plan of divinely-inspired perfection.
“Let’s call our new farm, ‘The Promised Land,’” Moe suggested with enthusiasm. “Our first Dad was Moses, and our new dad can be Joshua, leading us in to take it away from the Canaanites!”
“That reminds me,” Mom inserted, “I’ve noticed that some of you have chosen to call the Sergeant ‘Dad.’”
“I kind of like ‘the Sergeant,’” interrupted Mr. Sparrow. “Makes me sound more intimidating.”
“Oh, stop,” Mrs. Sparrow protested with exasperation at the general mood of silliness. “You can call him whatever you like,” she continued, “but I think we should call your first dad something else to avoid confusion. How about ‘Daddy Moses’? I think he would like that.”
They all tasted the name and pronounced it suitable, but Moe was still thinking about what to call the farm. “How about the Lazy Rocking J?” he suddenly suggested.
“Where in the world did you come up with that?” Katie wanted to know. Moe shrugged. Apparently he was just trying to stimulate discussion.
“Maybe the farm already has a name,” the Sergeant suggested. “Mrs. Scroggins?”
“We used to call it ‘Hardscrabble,’” she responded with a laugh.
“Ooh, Scrabble!” Katie squealed in delight, not quite comprehending the implication of the term.
“What about ‘Salem’?” Mom suggested. “I was born in the city of Salem, and I’ve always loved the name.”
“I like it,” the Sergeant remarked. “That’s the English version of the Hebrew ‘
shalom,’” he told them, “which means ‘peace.’”
The name was confirmed by unanimous acclamation. That night, instead of going to bed with nightmares about burglars, the family slept with excited dreams about a farm named Salem – Peace.
The Sparrow Found A House (Sparrow Stories #1) Page 19
