Summer of Joy

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Not that it wasn’t something a Christian should mark, but she’d read somewhere that Bible scholars said Jesus wasn’t even born on Christmas Day. No snow on the stable roof. They claimed somebody just picked that date. Something about there already being some kind of holiday to celebrate the sun starting back closer to the earth. As if the people way back then even knew what the sun was doing. After all, they thought the world was flat as a pancake.

  So who knew, and as David said, what difference did it make when they celebrated? The important thing was that Jesus had been born. Some people were always coming up with something to try to mess up a good Christian’s head. A person had to decide what was right. By reading the Bible and praying, of course, but then they just had to stick to it.

  One thing for sure, every snowflake outside was sticking to it. To the ground, that is. There had to already be two inches of the white stuff on her front walk. It was plain inconvenient. Not that First Baptist canceled services because of a little snow. Or because families were having Christmas get-togethers. That’s what David’s church had done today. Just called off night services without a second thought. What about getting together as a church family? People should go to services twice on Sunday. It was a person’s Christian duty.

  But she couldn’t really wade through all that snow to church, and heaven knew she couldn’t drive. She’d never seen the need of buying snow tires. It didn’t snow all that often, and she could always walk wherever she needed to go in Hollyhill. The way the snow was coming down, though, it might be over her boot tops by the time services were over and she had to walk home.

  That’s why she’d called Gertie. Gertie drove a Volkswagen. It looked like some kind of yellow beetle, and a person didn’t have room for her knees inside it, but it scooted along on top of the snow without the first bit of problem. Gertie was going on eighty years old and sometimes turned the wrong way down one-way streets, but Hollyhill had no business having one-way streets anyhow. People could just back up out of the way if the street was too narrow to pass on. That’s what they’d done for years before Buzz Palmor got to be mayor and decided Hollyhill needed to go modern.

  Not that she didn’t vote for him. She almost had to. She’d gone to school with his sister and known Buzz ever since he used to wipe his nose on his sleeve back before he started school. And they could always count on him buying ads in the Banner during election years even when nobody was running against him. Still, that didn’t mean she had to be for everything he did.

  Zella looked at the clock. It was almost time to go stand by the door and watch for Gertie. She rinsed out her teacup in the sink and left it to drain. She was getting her coat and boots out of the closet when there was a knock on the door. She frowned. That was odd. Gertie never came to the door. She always just tooted her horn umpteen times until Zella came out. Her horn must be on the blink.

  Zella normally peeked out the window to see who was standing on her doorstep before she opened the door, but she was right beside the door and poor Gertie would be getting covered up with snow. So she just pulled open the door.

  It wasn’t Gertie. Zella was too surprised to slam the door shut. A young man stood on her doorstep. Not much more than a boy really. He didn’t have on a hat and snow was clinging to his short brown hair. His ears were red from the cold. He had his hands in his pockets as he stood there shivering. Zella looked down at his feet. No boots either. Young people were so foolish sometimes. Willing to freeze rather than wear sensible clothes. But other than not having the sense to wear proper clothes, he looked harmless enough.

  “Mrs. Curtsinger?” he said.

  She knew at once who he was, but she wasn’t ready to admit it. “Miss Curtsinger,” she said pointedly. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Are you stuck in the snow?” Zella peered past him at the strange car out on the street parked right where Gertie would be pulling up any minute now. “I could call somebody for you.”

  “No, no. I’m not stuck. I’ve come about Wesley Green. Can I come in?”

  She wanted to say no. Just tell him to go back to Pelphrey, Ohio, or wherever he came from. That she didn’t even know a Wesley Green. And then she could shut the door. But the poor boy did look half frozen. And Gertie would be driving up any minute. No telling what Gertie might tell him if he started talking to her. She might even recognize Wesley’s eyes staring out of the boy’s face. Better to get him inside out of sight. Of course the car was there, but it could be anybody’s car. The snow would be covering up the license plate that would reveal the car was from out of state.

  “Certainly. Step inside so I can shut the door. It’s cold.” She reached out and pulled him over the threshold before slamming the door shut. Lights were coming down the street, but thank heavens it wasn’t Gertie. Zella had a few minutes to figure out what to do.

  The boy stood on the scatter rug inside her door and dripped snow. “Have I come at a bad time? Were you going somewhere?” he asked. He looked at her coat on the chair by the door.

  “Church. It’s Sunday night. I was going to church.”

  “Oh, then I have come at a bad time, but if you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’d like to explain why I’m here. I’m Robert Green. I wrote to you a few weeks ago, remember?”

  “Of course I remember. You don’t think I’d let just anybody in my house, do you?” Zella’s mind was racing a mile a minute, but she wasn’t coming up with any solutions. She’d just have to go out and tell Gertie it was snowing too much for her to go to church, but Gertie would never believe that. It hadn’t snowed too much for forty years.

  Maybe she could tell her she’d caught Leigh’s cold. That might even be true. She could feel a headache coming on. Then once she got rid of Gertie she could think of a way to hide out this boy long enough to give her time to figure out how to tell Wesley he had a grandson. In Hollyhill.

  She shouldn’t have put off answering the boy’s letter so long. She’d had every intention of writing him. Had gotten out her stationery a couple of times, but it took time to come up with the best words for a letter like that. And she was just so busy before Christmas with all that was going on. She never thought about him just up and appearing on her doorstep. Young people had no patience.

  “No, of course not,” the boy was saying. “You look like a very sensible woman. If you could just tell me how I could find this Wesley Green you wrote and told us about? Then I can go talk to him. Find out if he’s my grandfather.”

  “He’s your grandfather.” Zella didn’t have time for niceties.

  The boy’s face was a mixture of surprise and confusion as if he’d just opened up a present he’d been wanting, but now that he had it, he wasn’t sure what to do with it. “How can you be so sure?”

  “You’re the spitting image of him.”

  “Oh, well, great. So does he live nearby?”

  “It’s not that easy,” Zella said. “You can’t just go show up on his doorstep. He might have a stroke.”

  “So he’s still not recovered from his accident?”

  “Not totally.” Of course Wesley wouldn’t have a stroke. That had just been a figure of speech, but Wesley was still limping from that tree falling on him. So it wasn’t completely a lie.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” The boy looked concerned.

  Zella couldn’t worry about that. She had plenty of other things to worry about. Like Gertie sitting on her horn out by the curb.

  “Is that somebody coming to pick you up?” the boy asked.

  “It is.”

  “I can come back later, I suppose.” He looked toward the window out at the snow. “Is there a motel in town?”

  “In Hollyhill? Hardly. You’re not in Lexington.” Zella let out a long sigh. “Just stay put here and give me a minute to get rid of Gertie. Then I’ll figure out something.”

  She didn’t even take time to put on her coat and boots. She just ran down the walk stepping
in the boy’s footprints to the curb. When Gertie rolled down the window, Zella told her she thought she might be catching something.

  “I don’t wonder.” Gertie gave her a disapproving look. “Out here with no coat and nothing on your head. You’ll catch your death.”

  “I should have called you. I’m sorry,” Zella told her. She was feeling a little breathless and not just from the run to the curb. She was beginning to feel like one of those silly characters in the novels she read who acted as if they didn’t have a lick of sense and were always running pell-mell into trouble of some sort or another. Not that she was in any kind of danger. The boy inside her house didn’t look a bit dangerous. And she wasn’t afraid of Wesley. Even if it did turn out he was running from the law the way she’d always thought.

  “That’s okay. I go right by here anyway.” Gertie shifted the gears on her little car. “Whose car is that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Zella said. Again not exactly a lie. She didn’t know for sure that it was the boy’s car. “Maybe somebody got stuck. You be sure you don’t.”

  “Don’t worry about me and old Millie here.” Gertie hit her steering wheel. “We’ve handled lots worse than this little skiff of snow.” She started rolling up her window. “You go on back inside before you freeze.”

  It wasn’t until Zella turned and started back up the walk that she saw she hadn’t pulled her drapes over her double front windows. The boy was standing there in the middle of her living room plain as day.

  Zella looked over her shoulder at Gertie, but Gertie had her eyes on the road as she pulled away from the curb. Maybe Gertie hadn’t noticed the boy. After all, it was snowing pretty hard and Gertie didn’t see far off as well as she used to. She might not have even looked toward the house. She’d been looking at Zella with no coat or hat on out in the snow. Zella should have at least grabbed some kind of hat or scarf. The snow was surely melting her curls.

  Zella held her hands over her head like an umbrella and rushed back up the walk. The boy must have been watching out the window because he opened the door for her. When had that ever happened? Somebody opening her own front door to let her in her own house.

  “Are you okay, Miss Curtsinger?” he asked when she pushed past him and slammed the door shut.

  “I’m fine,” she said, panting a little as she brushed the snow off her shoulders and slipped her feet out of her felt house shoes. They were probably ruined. The toes of her hose were soaked and faded blue from the house shoes. Even before she worried about shaking the snow off her hair, she went over and yanked the drapes shut. Then she carefully touched her hair and tried to brush off the snow without destroying her curls, but the curls felt wet and sort of flat. Things were definitely going from bad to worse.

  “So do you think you could call my grandfather and tell him I’m in town and would like to see him? Maybe that would soften the shock of my showing up out of the blue.”

  “Blue? It looks all white out there to me.” She made the halfhearted attempt at a joke just to stall for time, but it made her feel better when he smiled. He was a nice-looking boy. Friendly eyes even if they were like Wesley’s.

  “I’ve got to admit you’re right about that, Miss Curt-singer. It’s some storm. When I left home this morning, it wasn’t snowing a bit and the weathermen weren’t even calling for snow at home or here. I checked.”

  “You can’t depend on the weather forecast,” Zella said. “Come on in the kitchen and I’ll fix you some cocoa. You do like cocoa, don’t you?”

  “That sounds wonderful,” the boy said.

  “And take your shoes off so your feet can dry out. You don’t want to get some kind of fungus,” Zella said as she led the way to the kitchen.

  He was a nice boy. Wesley would want to meet him. If only she could figure out a way for him to be there in Hollyhill without her having to admit she had anything to do with it. Not that she thought it was wrong what she’d done. Somebody had needed to find out about Wesley’s family in case he had died after that tree fell on him. It was certainly a possibility. Him dying. It was a possibility for anybody. Dying. Nobody had any guarantees of another day.

  She was putting mustard on some bread to make the boy a ham sandwich because weren’t boys his age always hungry, when David’s name popped in her head. David. Of course. David would know how to handle it. David could talk to Wesley. The boy could even go to David’s house and spend the night. David wouldn’t care. After all, wasn’t he always saying Wesley was the same as family to him? If Wesley was family, then so was this boy. And a person had to make room for family.

  She left the boy eating the sandwich and drinking the hot cocoa and went to the living room to call David. She didn’t know why she’d been so worried. When a person was doing what she knew was best, things always worked out. She felt a little warm glow inside as if she’d been drinking some of the hot cocoa herself. Maybe she would sit down at the table with the boy and drink a cup after she talked to David. She might even put in two marshmallows.

  23

  Jocie had just come in from outside when the phone rang. She’d taken Stephen Lee out to introduce him to snow. Aunt Love had made her put so many clothes on the poor baby that nothing but a small circle around his eyes even showed, so he hadn’t really gotten much feel of the snow. He liked looking at Zeb more than the snowflakes. When Jocie held him down by the dog, Stephen Lee bounced his mitten-covered hands on top of Zeb’s head. Zeb didn’t seem to mind especially after Jocie gave the dog a biscuit left over from breakfast as a reward.

  It had been a fun Christmas weekend and the unexpected snow piling up outside was an extra bonus. She doubted if her dad was enjoying it all that much since he and Leigh were out on the roads somewhere. Then again, he might like getting snowbound with Leigh. Jocie didn’t know whether Leigh liked snow or not, but she probably wouldn’t mind being stuck in the snow with Jocie’s dad.

  Jocie loved snow. She guessed they might have three inches on the ground already. She’d take out a ruler later to measure for sure. At least they’d have snow pictures to put in the Banner this week. Snow pictures always sold a few extra papers.

  She’d slipped her feet out of her boots at the door but hadn’t taken off her coat or gotten Stephen Lee out of his snowsuit when the phone rang. Tabitha and Aunt Love were both off in their rooms taking naps or something since Jocie was entertaining the baby, so she grabbed the phone. She hoped it wouldn’t be a church member saying one of his or her sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, whoever, was sick. She wouldn’t be able to write down a message for her dad.

  It was hard enough trying to keep a good hold on Stephen Lee in his snowsuit. Plus he was beginning to fuss.

  It was Zella, of all people. “I need to talk to your father,” she said.

  “Is everything okay?” Jocie asked. Zella never called. Not unless she needed something right away. Like the time the pipe under her sink had burst and her kitchen had flooded.

  “Of course it is. I just need to speak to your father.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Well, where is he?” Zella sounded irritated. Or maybe it was just the interference on the line. Sometimes the phones went out when there was a lot of snow or rain.

  “He’s gone with Leigh to Grundy. I thought Leigh told you.” Jocie talked loud to get over the crackling on the line.

  “Oh,” Zella said. “She did, but I thought they’d have the good sense not to go in all this snow.”

  “It wasn’t snowing much when they left.”

  “Well, it is now. They should have come home.”

  “They’re probably on the way. Did you need something?” Jocie’s arm was getting tired and Stephen Lee was whimpering more. She tried swaying him back and forth.

  “Certainly I needed something. I needed to talk to David.” Zella was quiet for a minute. The crackling on the line was getting louder. “So if he’s left already, he should be there in an hour at the very longest.”

  “Mayb
e. I don’t know. He may get snowbound somewhere.”

  “He won’t. But that’s what I needed. There’s this boy here who’s got snowbound and he needs a place to stay. I’m sending him to your house because obviously he can’t stay here.”

  “What’s he doing at your house?”

  “Don’t be asking so many questions. You don’t have to know everything. Here’s just where he ended up. And now he needs a place to stay and David will know what to do.”

  “To do? What do you mean? And how’s he going to get here if he’s snowbound?”

  “I didn’t say he was stuck. Just snowbound. He’ll explain it all to your father when he gets there.”

  “But Dad’s not here,” Jocie said again. The line went dead. For a minute Jocie thought Zella had hung up on her, but when she pushed the plunger down and let it back up, she didn’t get a dial tone. The snow must have gotten to the line.

  “Oh well, so much for nutty old Zella,” Jocie told the baby as she carried him over to the couch to get him out of his snowsuit. She shrugged off her coat. “Nutty, nutty Zella. She should have just sent him over to Wes. He has an extra couch. That’s more than we have around here. Right, baby boo?”

  Stephen Lee laughed. Jocie didn’t know whether it was because of what she was saying or if he was just glad to get free of the bulky snowsuit. “I’ll go get a snowball for you to play with later. That way you can touch the snow. Your mama won’t care. She says you need to learn new things. I mean, you’re already three and a half months old.”

  Aunt Love came in the living room. “Was that your father on the phone?”

  “Nope. Zella. She’s sending some guy out here to spend the night. At least I think she is.”

  “Who in the world?”

  “Beats me. Something about the guy being snowbound but not stuck. I hope Dad doesn’t get stuck.” Jocie picked up Stephen Lee and kissed his red cheeks.

  Aunt Love was frowning. “Call her back and tell her to send whoever it is over to stay with Wesley. That would be closer anyway.”