“How, Jennie?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
Jennie hesitated and glanced down into her lap.
“Why don’t I wait outside?” said Christopher, starting to rise and thinking Jennie felt awkward in front of him.
“No, no—please, Mr. Braxton,” said Jennie, looking up at him. “It’s all right if you stay. It’s not you; it’s just . . . it’s so hard to talk about.”
“I understand,” replied Christopher. “But really, I’d be happy to leave you alone if you’d feel more comfortable just with Corrie.”
“No—no, I think I’d like you to stay. Corrie said you used to be a minister; maybe you can help. I . . . I just don’t know what to do, and I’ve got no one to turn to.”
Again she looked away and started to cry. This time the tears began to flow in earnest.
“All right,” said Christopher, “I’ll stay. But you must call me Christopher, or I’ll feel like an old man here with you children!”
Jennie tried to smile politely through her tears, but it was a weak effort. She nodded at Christopher to show she appreciated what he’d said.
Christopher and I sat waiting. It was difficult resisting the urge to want to leave. I knew Jennie needed to talk—and wanted to talk. But I couldn’t help feeling like we were intruding where we didn’t belong. But I had been with Christopher enough by now to know that pastors—or former pastors like him—who had a heart of love for people sometimes probed a little to get people to open up about their problems. When somebody was hurting about anything, Christopher could sense it almost immediately, and he wanted to get right in and find out the cause of the hurt to see if there was some way he could help, even just by prayer. I could tell that his heart had gone out to Jennie the instant she had answered our knock on the door.
Finally I got up and sat beside her and gave her my handkerchief.
“I thought it would be so wonderful being married,” Jennie began after she had cried softly for a minute. “But it wasn’t long before I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake.”
I placed my hand on hers, and she clutched at it tightly.
“Oh, Corrie!” exclaimed Jennie, “You don’t know how many times in the last two years I’ve wished I’d had your good sense and not been so anxious to snag myself a husband. That was all I could think of back then. You remember when we used to talk before we were married? I’m embarrassed to say it, but I used to think you were silly for not being, you know, like other girls. You didn’t talk about boys and marriage all the time. You had your writing and other things you were interested in. I used to think it was strange—but now I see you were just waiting for the right time and right man.”
Suddenly Jennie seemed to realize what she was doing. She stopped and looked over at me with an embarrassed expression.
“I probably shouldn’t be saying all this. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to burden you down with my problems.”
“Oh, Jennie,” I said. “Your problems aren’t burdensome to me in the least. You are my friend. I am interested and want to help.”
Christopher spoke up now for the first time.
“We don’t want you to tell us any specifics right now, Jennie,” he said, “while the wounds are so fresh. It’s best not to confide hurtful things about someone else when you are upset, when your perspective is clouded. It’s been my experience that often people say things under such circumstances that they wish they could retrieve later.”
Jennie nodded.
“Corrie and I both want you to know that we will do whatever we can. It is enough right now that you have shared your hurt with us. We want to extend to you all that we can be as friends and listeners. We will pray for you. You can know that you are not alone in this. I would encourage you to pray as well. God will hear you. He loves both you and Tom and wants only the best for you.”
Christopher stood up.
“I think I’ll mosey out to the field and see what Tom’s up to. Maybe I can strike up a conversation.”
Jennie looked doubtful, but she didn’t protest. She and I continued to talk quietly between ourselves, both of us sharing the adjustments we’d had to make to married life, while Christopher left the house.
Chapter 16
Fenceposts and Rails
Christopher walked outside, glanced around, spotted Tom in the distance, and headed over the uneven terrain toward him.
The two had, of course, met and had seen one another any number of times in the almost year and a half since Christopher had come to Miracle Springs, but there had never been any kind of camaraderie between them. Tom Woodstock was not a sensitive or a talkative man, and I doubted strongly whether he had any interest whatever in spiritual things. I don’t know what I had to base that statement on except that I had never once seen him in church and that his personality was kind of sharp and rough.
I had never really understood what Jennie saw in Tom, but then sometimes girls can be attracted to young men for the strangest of reasons, often having nothing whatever to do with what kind of person these men are inside. I suppose that some girls deceive themselves into thinking a man is of worthy character in order to justify the emotions they feel for good looks or brawn or something else like that. I couldn’t imagine any other reason why Jennie would have fallen in love with someone like Tom Woodstock. And maybe some girls figure they’ll be able to tame a rough man—change him to be what they hope he’ll be, all the while overlooking what he really is.
Tom was struggling to attach a long six-inch split rail to the top of two fence posts that stuck out of the ground from two holes he had dug for them. But the rail was heavy, and he was having difficulty keeping the loose end where he had perched it on top of the post while he tried to wire-wrap the other end long enough to steady it. Already it had fallen twice, and frustration was beginning to set in, aggravated by the knowledge that his wife was inside talking to her friend and her cheerful do-gooder of a husband—probably about him, if he knew Jennie!
As Christopher approached, Tom did not look up or greet him in any way.
Christopher, who had installed miles of fences in his time, saw immediately what the problem was as he drew closer. He broke into a run, reaching the loose end of the rail just as it was about to wobble to the edge of the post and crash down to the ground for a third time.
“Hey, Tom,” he cried, “looks like you could use a hand!”
He latched onto it and held it steady while Tom completed the temporary fastening of his end.
“Toss me the wire, and I’ll tie this one down,” said Christopher.
Nonchalantly, and still without saying a word, Tom threw over the wound bale of wire, which landed with a thud at Christopher’s feet. Still holding the end of the rail in place with his left hand, he stooped down, retrieved the bale, and in thirty seconds had tightly bound the rail to the post with several strong diagonal strands.
“Got some cutters?” he asked, relaxing his hold now long enough to roll up his two sleeves.
Two seconds later the tool landed at his feet. Christopher picked it up, snapped the wire in two, twisted the two ends to hold the rail in place, then faced Tom.
“What were you going to do, run a piece of doweling through the two posts?” Christopher asked.
“Yep, figured that’s what I’d do,” answered Tom, speaking for the first time.
“Got your brace and auger bit out here?” asked Christopher. “If you’d like, I’ll get started boring a hole in this end.”
“Yeah, right over here.”
Christopher walked over, Tom handed him the bit, and the next moment Christopher was circling his hand around and around on the handle while the bit chewed into the wood. In three or four minutes the tip of the bit protruded out the other end of the post and a little pile of the hole’s former contents lay at Christopher’s feet.
“There, that ought to do it,” he said, twisting the bit back out backward. “I’ll go ahead and get the second hole drilled on your side if you wan
t to pound in your dowel.”
Christopher and Tom traded ends, went about their respective jobs, and in another ten minutes the rail was solidly in place. Tom sawed off the excess dowel while Christopher unwrapped the wires that had held up the two ends temporarily. Then they stood back to admire the result.
“Thanks, Braxton,” said Tom. “That sure made an easier time of it.”
“How many more of those you got to do?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged Tom. “About a dozen.”
“Could you use some help?”
“Naw. Me and Jennie’s a little short right now, I couldn’t afford to—”
“I wasn’t asking you for a job, Tom,” laughed Christopher. “I was just asking if you could use some help—neighbor to neighbor. Believe me, I won’t ask for a cent, and wouldn’t take one if you offered it to me.”
Tom shrugged again.
Just then Christopher saw Jennie and me emerging from the house.
“Ah, looks like our wives are done with their visit,” he said, slowly moving in my direction. “You going to be working on the fence this afternoon?”
“I reckon so,” shrugged Tom.
“Let me ask it another way, then. If I were to show up here to help you, would you run me off?”
“No, I don’t reckon I’d do that,” said Tom with a reluctant upturn of his lips into something that could have passed for a weak smile.
“Good,” said Christopher. “Then I’ll be back in two or three hours and we’ll finish up your fence.”
He ran back to the house, then jumped up into the buggy beside me. I could tell he was itching to tell me about it, which he did as we rode home.
Chapter 17
Moles and Dark Passageways
It was probably a week later when I got up a little before Christopher one morning. I came out of the bunkhouse and saw Pa standing alone behind the house.
I went slowly in that direction. He was standing, staring out at the grass that grew between the house and the edge of the woods. I walked up and slipped my hand through his arm and stood at his side.
Neither of us said anything for another minute or two. I knew Pa would tell me what he was thinking when he was ready.
“See them mole mounds there, Corrie?” he said at length.
I nodded, looked out where three or four fresh piles of black dirt sat in the middle of the grass.
“I been fighting them moles ever since we came out here, trying to keep their holes from making a horse stumble and break his leg. Just when you think they’ve disappeared for good, up pops a new, fresh bunch of mounds.”
“Are those new ones, Pa?” I asked.
“Yep. New this morning. I ain’t seen evidence of moles right out there in six months or so. Then all of a sudden there they are again.”
He sighed.
“It’s just like that rascal Harris,” Pa went on. “Him turning back up’s just like a mole mound popping up from out of nowhere just when you think your problems are behind you.”
“A little worse than a mole, Pa,” I said. “He sounds to me like a bad man.”
“He’s an ornery varmint—I reckon you’re right there. But the moles reminded me of him anyhow. Standing here looking at them mounds puts me in a mind of how our lives are sometimes. You can put on a front for folks and make them think you’re a nice enough feller. But down deep where no one sees, I reckon we all got our dark passageways and tunnels where our own black critters crawl about and live—just like our property here’s got moles running around it down outta sight. Just because we don’t see them for months at a time, they’re there all right. They got their burrows and tunnels all over out there.”
He swept his hand out across the yard in the direction of the woods.
“That’s just like us. We got our hidden places no one sees . . . till, all of a sudden, something like this deal with Harris comes along and up pops a black, ugly pile of dirt from inside for all the world to see.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“Sounds like some of the articles I used to write, Pa,” I said.
“Well, maybe you helped me to learn to see a mite deeper into things, Corrie Belle,” Pa replied. “I reckon your writing did me good that way, whatever it did for anybody else.”
“I didn’t know that, Pa,” I said.
“I read ever’ word you ever wrote, Corrie.”
“I knew that. But I’m your daughter. You had to read it.”
“I read it ’cause I wanted to, ’cause it was good writing. I’m telling you the truth—it helped me, too. I figured if my Corrie could see things the way you did, well then I oughta see if I couldn’t try to see things like that, too.”
“You don’t know how pleased that makes me, Pa,” I said. “That makes everything I wrote worth it ten times over.”
“It’s the truth. I was mighty proud of you. Still am.”
“Thank you, Pa,” I said softly. I was about to cry! What a wonderful thing for a father to say to his daughter.
“And since Zack came back from his winter with Hawk, why, he won’t stop talking about hidden things and how they tie into our lives. Anyhow,” Pa went on, “what I’m seeing right now is that sometimes we’re none too pretty to look at, which is how I been feeling this last week—full of dark things out of the past, with black dirt popping up out of me all over the place.”
Again he sighed. We stood there quietly for some time. What an openhearted man he’d allowed himself to become, I thought to myself.
“Well,” he said after a while with a determined sigh, “I reckon I’m finally ready to do it.”
“Do what, Pa?”
“Pray that prayer Christopher told us about,” he replied. “Come on, let’s go inside. Everybody’s probably there by now. This is something we all gotta be part of together.”
Chapter 18
Willing Prayer
Pa and I turned and walked back toward the house. The others were all just gathering for breakfast. Pa said he’d like to talk to everyone. We went into the big room, sat down, and waited.
“I been thinking hard about what Christopher told us the other day,” Pa began after a few minutes, “about how to pray for things.”
He drew in a long breath.
“I reckon I’m ready to do it,” he went on. “I mean, I think God’s telling me to do it. He’s been asking me the same thing he asked Christopher—if I was willing to be the person he might want to use to answer my own prayer. Seemed a mite cockeyed a thing to me at first—praying for somebody who’s out to put a bullet in your head, then telling God that instead of hiding from the feller you’ll let him answer the prayer through you! How could he even do such a thing? I been trying to make sense out of it for a week, but I can’t.
“Then it came to me how all God’s ways of doing things are a mite cockeyed from man’s way of looking at them. Anyhow, it ain’t so much a matter of whether I can make sense of it, but just whether or not I’m willing to do it.
“So I figure if my praying’s gonna do much good, I gotta be willing. But I’d really like the rest of you to pray with me. It’s a fearsome thing when a man like Harris is involved. I’m sure Zack’d say the same thing. Harris is a bad apple. This is a new thing for me, and I ain’t sure I’d be able to pray it by myself.”
“It would be our honor to pray with you, Drum,” said Christopher, rising and walking to Pa’s side. He laid a hand on Pa’s shoulder, his own father-in-law, and closed his eyes. Almeda was immediately at Pa’s other side, and the rest of us gathered around him, too.
“Well, Lord,” Pa prayed, “here I am coming before you again. I want to pray for Harris like I did last week. But this time, Lord, I just want to tell you that I’m ready for you to use me to answer that prayer, that is, if there’s some way you can use me, or if you want to. I can’t think of anything I could do that’d help you in any way. What could I do that you couldn’t do better yourself—especially since the man wants to see me dead? But if
there’s something you can and want to do, then, like I say, I’m willing to be the tool you use.”
He sighed deeply, and I knew the words I’d just heard had not been uttered without a cost to Pa deep inside him. I knew he’d struggled for a week over this, facing the extent of his own willingness. I could not help but be reminded of Jesus’ prayer in the garden. I knew this was Pa’s own way of saying to the Lord, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”
“I can’t say that there ain’t a part of me that’s scared to pray it,” Pa went on, still talking to God. “I know it may be that it’ll cost me my life, ’cause sometimes that’s what it takes to get through to some men. But if you want me to give my life for another man, I don’t reckon it’s more than you did yourself. You gave your life for me and all the rest of us, including Jesse Harris. My life’s yours anyway now, to do with what you want. I don’t reckon my faith’s worth much if I’m not willing to follow you and do what you did.
“So I pray you’d do your best for Jesse. Like I said before, I pray that you’ll be God to him, and however you want to use me to do that is all right by me.”
Whispered amens sounded from two or three of us.
Almeda was crying softly. So was I. We both loved Pa so much. But we also knew what Pa’s prayer could mean. Sometimes God did use people’s lives.
Everyone admired Pa for what he’d done. But my heart was heavy, too. I couldn’t help being afraid.
“The Lord will honor your obedience, Drum,” said Christopher softly. “You are an example to us all.”
Chapter 19
A Disheartening Proposition
Christopher and Pa, Tad and Zack were still working the mine every day. They’d bored and picked and dynamited their way halfway through the mountain, but so far they had only found small amounts of gold.
Alkali Jones was around most days, too, and usually ate lunch with us and sometimes supper, but it seemed to me he was getting too weak to do too much of the actual work.
Alkali had always looked old to me. But it had been more than fifteen years since I’d first laid eyes on him, and I didn’t know any other word to describe him now than ancient. I hesitate to use the word feeble to describe a man we all loved so dearly. But he did walk more slowly than before, and every once in a while I was afraid his tired old knees were going to give out altogether.
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