Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “Nobody is ever too old. And it’s not a matter of changing your stripes. It’s just a matter of trusting the Lord with the stripes you have.”

  Wes looked down at his hands. “You could be right, David. But then again I think I may be like some of the old reprobates I’ve known. Past saving.”

  “You’re not a reprobate, Wes. The Lord’s camping right outside your heart, but he won’t come in unless you ask him to.”

  Wes kept his eyes away from David’s face. After a couple of minutes, he said, “I sure could use some coffee to tide me over till breakfast. And how come you’re up and about so early anyhow? You got a date or something?”

  “Or something.” David let Wes change the subject. But somehow he knew the door hadn’t been completely closed. Still he could only pray that Wes would decide to push that door back open himself. David couldn’t push it open for him, as much as he wanted to. So David had prayed as he made the coffee and helped Wes dress. Silently to himself, even as he admitted to his early morning mission with the rose.

  Wes had smiled at him as he left the house. “The girl will like the rose. And old Zell will swoon when she hears about it.”

  “It’s not Zella I’m trying to make swoon.”

  “Leigh’s way too sensible a girl to swoon, but her eyes will light up and her cheeks will go rosy. She don’t know it, but she’s a right pretty girl when her cheeks go all rosy.”

  Now as David stepped forward to meet Leigh, he could see Wes had called it right. Leigh’s eyes were shining. Her cheeks were red, and she was pretty. He held the rose out toward her. “A pretty rose for a pretty girl.”

  Her cheeks went redder, but she looked happy. “How sweet,” she said as she took the rose and held it up to her nose to breathe in its fragrance. “It smells heavenly.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me coming out to walk with you this morning,” David said.

  “Of course not. Not if you don’t mind me looking a mess. I thought I’d walk and then clean up for work.” Leigh pushed her hair back from her face.

  “You look fine. Better than fine,” David said as he kept his eyes on hers.

  “Now come on, preachers aren’t supposed to tell fibs,” Leigh said with a little laugh. “My hair’s a mess. I’m sweating like a pig, and I probably stink.”

  David laughed along with her. “Who cares about hair? And the good Lord intended for us to sweat when we get hot, and I can’t smell anything but roses.” He took her elbow and turned her toward the baseball field. “How many rounds are you going to make this morning?”

  “I was thinking two, maybe three,” Leigh said as she carefully placed the rose in the shade by the dugout before they went out on the field. “But we can walk all morning if you want. Of course, Ralph might send the sheriff out to hunt me.”

  “And the Banner wouldn’t get printed,” David said.

  “Then I guess we’d better just do three. I might could hide out from the sheriff, but the people in Hollyhill expect their paper on Wednesdays.”

  “Whether there’s any news to print or not,” David said.

  “A slow news week?”

  “If Wes was here, he’d say every week was a slow news week in Hollyhill, or at least almost every week. Next week there should be plenty to print.”

  “You mean because of school starting and desegregation?” Leigh asked as they passed by first base and headed toward the outfield fence. “You think there will be problems?”

  “I hope not, but I don’t know. Did I tell you I hired Noah Hearndon to help at the paper until Wes is back on his feet?”

  “I heard you talking about it Sunday,” Leigh said. “Zella said he was supposed to start yesterday afternoon. She didn’t sound too happy about it.”

  “Zella thinks I made a mistake hiring him. She thinks I’m asking for trouble.”

  “In what way?” Leigh looked up at him as they walked.

  “With our subscribers. With Jocie. With Noah. I don’t know.”

  “Are you sorry you offered the job to Noah?”

  “No. I think he’ll be a quick learner and a good worker, and we needed the help.”

  “Then there you are,” Leigh said as if that settled everything. “Your subscribers will just be glad to get their papers on time, and you can keep your eye on Jocie. But I think she was more entranced by Noah’s little twin sister and brother than she was by Noah on Sunday.”

  “She does love babies,” David said.

  “I guess that’s good with Tabitha’s baby just weeks away. Tabitha told me she was due around the last of September. The twenty-sixth, wasn’t it?”

  “Right. Sometimes I wonder if I’m ready for that,” David said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a baby in the house.”

  “I’ve never had a baby in the house. I always wished for a little brother or sister, but it never happened. Mother said one was enough.”

  “Were you that hard to handle as a kid?” David smiled over at her.

  “No, not at all. I was always too good. Sometimes I think I’m still too good.” Leigh frowned a little. “I guess that’s a weird thing to say. I mean, you can’t be too good, can you?”

  She stopped walking and waited for his answer. Her face was so open and innocent. She really was young, more in experience than years. He probably wasn’t doing her any favors bringing her that rose and encouraging her to pin her hopes on a man of his age. But he didn’t feel all that old standing there beside her, looking down into her beautiful blue eyes.

  A bead of sweat was rolling down her forehead, and he reached over and gently wiped it off. A charge ran through him when his finger touched her skin. She must have felt it too as her eyes popped open wider. He had the sudden urge to kiss her, but he fought the feeling. It was too soon.

  Still, even as he told himself that, he dropped his hand down to trace her lips with his thumb. They were incredibly soft. Her lips parted a bit, and he could feel the warmth of her breath on his fingers. He clamped down on the feelings rising inside him and pulled his hand away. He turned and started walking again.

  Leigh stayed rooted to her spot as she watched David take one step and then two steps away from her. She felt as if she were on a roller coaster. One second she was at the heights, the next second crashing to the bottom. And suddenly anger pushed through her, sweeping away all thoughts of propriety and good sense. She put her hands on her hips and said, “Stop right there, David Brooke.”

  David looked back at her, his face surprised. She didn’t care. She was going to surprise him some more. He hadn’t answered her question about whether a person could be too good, so maybe she was answering it herself. That she wasn’t all that good after all. She looked him straight in the eye and said, “Do you or do you not want to kiss me, David Brooke?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” David said, his surprised look slowly being replaced by an amused smile.

  That just made Leigh angrier. “What? That you did or didn’t?”

  “Your lips are very enticing,” David said.

  “Then kiss them.” Leigh took a step toward him and stopped. The anger drained out of her. She felt near tears, scared and vulnerable, as she whispered, “Kiss me.”

  David took the other step back to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” she said. At the same time, she felt awkward. She was forcing him to kiss her. She shouldn’t have done that. A lady should wait until the man was ready to kiss her, not demand a kiss. Especially out in the middle of a dusty baseball field with the early morning sun warming their shoulders. How romantic was that?! And what was she supposed to do with her hands? Just let them hang down by her sides? Should she shut her eyes? She should have thought this through before she started demanding a kiss. What if she did it all wrong?

  “Relax,” he said as he gently put his finger under her chin and tipped her face up toward his. “It won’t hurt.”
>
  He was smiling but he looked a little nervous himself, and she remembered Jocie saying her father was probably out of practice kissing, the same as Leigh was. Of course, Leigh had never been in practice. She met his eyes and said, “Do you promise?”

  “I promise,” he said and dropped his mouth down to gently cover hers.

  Leigh shot back up to the top of the roller coaster and fireworks started exploding overhead. Without even thinking about what she was doing she stepped into David’s embrace and wrapped her arms around him. It was as natural as breathing.

  After the most amazing moment of time Leigh had ever lived, David lifted his head away from hers, but he kept his arms around her for another few seconds. Then she was stepping away from him. “I’m sorry, David,” she said. She wasn’t sorry he’d kissed her. She was ecstatic. But on the other hand she shouldn’t have forced him to kiss her. “I shouldn’t have made you do that if you didn’t want to.”

  “Did it feel like I didn’t want to?” he asked.

  “No, it felt wonderful. At least on my side of the lips.”

  He put his hand on her cheek and turned her face toward him. He touched his lips to hers again softly, but he didn’t let them linger. “You won’t have to ask me the next time.”

  Leigh practically floated the rest of the way around the ball field as they continued their walk. She had no idea what they talked about or if they even talked. It didn’t matter. David was there beside her. He’d kissed her. She’d kissed him. That was progress. That was more than progress. That was right off the chart.

  17

  The night before school started, Jocie jerked awake a dozen times before it was time to get up. She didn’t know if it was because she was afraid she’d oversleep or because she’d rolled her hair up on some old bristle rollers Tabitha had found when she was cleaning out her closet to make room for baby things. Jocie had never slept on rollers, and no matter how she lay, the rollers were digging into her head somewhere. But she wanted to look good on the first day of school, and Paulette said all the girls at high school curled their hair.

  Finally when Jocie turned on the lamp at four a.m. so she could check the time yet again, even Zeb ran out of patience with her. The dog stood up and gave her a long look as if enough was enough before he trotted to the back door to be let out. Jocie climbed out of bed and tiptoed over to open the door for him as quietly as possible. Then she stood by the open window and looked out at the stars still bright in the sky.

  She couldn’t see even a wisp of a cloud. No sign of rain. It had been so dry that most mornings only a bare trace of dew kissed the ground. The smell of the brown orchard grass in Mr. Crutcher’s hayfield drifted across the fence to her there at the window. Everything was drying up. Even the Mt. Pleasant Church folks’ gardens were suffering. They’d only gotten a small bucket of tomatoes last Sunday and no corn at all. Of course, they still got cabbage and zucchini.

  Rain was on every church’s prayer list in the county. Springs were drying up, and people were hauling water from town for their cisterns. The farmers her father had interviewed for the drought story in last week’s Banner had said it was the worst dry spell they could remember since the thirties. Back then, it had gotten so bad that some farmers had cut down trees so their cows could eat the leaves. Her father searched back through the Banner’s files and found an old picture of a herd of cows grazing on a downed tree. They put that on the top fold instead of the picture of the dried-up pond and sold all their extra papers.

  This week’s issue had a picture of the high school on the top fold. Just thinking about school made Jocie feel as if ants were running races inside her veins. One minute she couldn’t wait for the sun to come up so she could get ready to walk into school as a freshman, and the next minute she was scared to death. Her father had told her whenever something scared her to take a deep breath, say a little prayer, and then look whatever she was afraid of right in the face and see if there was really that much to fear.

  She could do the first two. She took a deep breath of the almost-cool night air coming through the window and whispered a prayer. “Dear Lord, thank you for this day. For the stars up above. Please send rain for the farmers’ crops. And help me not be scared today at school.”

  But the last thing she couldn’t do. She had no idea what she was going to face at school. Seniors and juniors making fun of her because she was a green freshman? Being lost in the halls with no idea where her classes were? Looking stupid?

  Noah had told her on Tuesday as they ran the paper that she didn’t have to worry about that last one. He said it was a sure thing and she might as well accept it. All freshmen looked stupid. He claimed he wasn’t a bit nervous about starting school, but she didn’t believe him. He had to be nervous starting a new school.

  Jocie took another deep breath and wished she could talk about it to somebody who understood. Tabitha hadn’t. She’d just told Jocie that starting high school wasn’t going to kill her, that she would surely hardly notice since she’d be going to school with the same kids she’d always gone to school with, except for the black kids, and black kids were just like any other kids. Tabitha said she’d gone to school with black kids, Chinese kids, Indian kids, Mexican kids, every kind of kid you could think of. Then Tabitha said she’d been the new kid at so many schools while she was with DeeDee that she couldn’t even remember them all. And look at her. She had survived.

  Jocie wasn’t worried about surviving. She was pretty sure she’d survive. She just wanted to know what to expect so she could be prepared. She’d tried to talk to her father the night before, but he hadn’t been much help. He’d been acting funny all week. Not hearing half of what she said. Being gone extra early nearly every morning. She reminded him three times the day before that he had to drive her to school this morning. Aunt Love said he was off “courting that girl.” Aunt Love still couldn’t remember Leigh’s name even though Jocie had written it down for her a half a dozen times.

  Something was different between Leigh and her father, but Jocie wasn’t able to quite put her finger on what. On Tuesday night, Jocie had noticed her father smiling a little extra at Leigh as they folded papers, and Leigh had either started wearing rouge or had a permanent blush.

  Zella must have noticed something different going on too. She’d caught Jocie off to the side while they were folding papers and grilled her about what she knew about it all.

  “Nothing, Zella. Dad hasn’t told me anything,” Jocie had admitted. “Hasn’t Leigh been keeping you up-to-date?”

  “She just says things are progressing, but she won’t tell me how.” Zella looked over her shoulder at Leigh. “After all I’ve done to get her this far, you’d think the least she could do is tell me what’s happening.”

  “Maybe it’s too private.”

  Zella looked back at Jocie. “What could be too private?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not the romantic expert. That’s you.”

  Zella’s eyes narrowed a little. “She’d have surely told me if he had finally gotten up the nerve to ask her out on some kind of real date.”

  “Maybe he kissed her,” Jocie suggested, just to have something to say.

  “She would have definitely told me that.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe she thinks that’s something just between her and Dad.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that.” Zella gave a little snort before she headed back to her spot at the table to start folding papers again.

  Jocie had stayed where she was and watched her father smiling at Leigh. An uneasy idea had wiggled awake inside her. Maybe if her father had fallen in love with Leigh, really in love, he wouldn’t have time for Jocie anymore.

  A noise from the kitchen jerked Jocie back to the present. Surely Aunt Love wasn’t up already. It was only four thirty, a long time before even her father got up. Then Jocie heard the clunk of Wes’s crutches hitting the floor. Maybe he was thirsty. Jocie went to the kitchen door and peeked in. In the light spilling out o
f the open refrigerator door, Wes was leaning on his crutches and trying to maneuver a broom to sweep something either under the cabinet or out from under the cabinet.

  “Can I help?” she said.

  He jerked around, and for a minute she thought he was going to fall. She rushed toward him, but she didn’t know how to help. So she just jumped around him while Wes dropped the broom, wobbled on his crutches, and finally caught his balance by leaning back against the cabinet behind him. “Criminy Pete, Jo, don’t sneak up on a feller like that.”

  “Sorry,” Jocie said. “I just wanted to help. Are you okay?”

  “You mean other than Mr. Jupiter having to restart my heart.” Wes put his hand flat against his chest. “Let me get my breath here.”

  “Can he do that from up on Jupiter?” Jocie asked. “That seems awfully far away.”

  “Mr. Jupiter has his ways, but don’t expect me to explain them right now. I ain’t got over the scare yet.”

  “I didn’t think you scared that easy.”

  “Well, maybe scared ain’t the exact right word. Startled might be better.” Wes peered at her in the dim light. “Except you are looking pretty scary with those wire contraptions sticking out of your head. They some kind of weird antenna to contact somebody in outer space?”

  “No, silly, they’re just curlers. I want to look good for school today.”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you, Jo, but they don’t improve your looks all that much.”

  “I’m not going to leave them in. They’re just supposed to make my hair curly.”

  “What’s wrong with straight hair?” Wes asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s just too plain. I don’t want to be plain today.”

  “There ain’t a thing plain about you, Jo. Never has been and never will be.”

  Jocie touched her curlers. A couple of them were about to fall out, but she just left them alone. It didn’t seem worth it to reroll them now. “I want to make sure today. And Paulette says none of the girls at high school have straight hair.”