Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  He wished the sun would hurry up and get close enough to the eastern horizon to put some light in the day. He wanted to find that chapter in Philippians that he’d read the day before. He couldn’t remember all of it, but one verse stuck in his head. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. But that was Paul writing. And Paul was a man who knew what the Lord wanted from him. And why wouldn’t he? The Lord had literally knocked him down and told him what that was. Wes wasn’t hardly ready to put himself anywhere close to being in the same category as Paul. Even if there was another spot in the Bible someplace where Paul had said he was the chief of sinners. If old Paul was the chief, Wes wasn’t sure where that might leave him.

  Still it had seemed like a sign when the Bible had fallen open to that “strengthening” verse twice in a row. Especially since Wes had been giving a lot of consideration to whether he had the strength to make it up the stairs back to his apartment. He was hoping he wouldn’t feel quite so old and helpless if he was living on his own again.

  And there was another reason. He wanted to see if this drawing he was feeling toward the Bible was just rubbing off on him from David and Lovella and Jo. Maybe he’d forget all about Bible reading and go back to reading his science fiction or mysteries again. Maybe back in his old apartment he’d be able to lean on his own strength again.

  He was sort of hoping he could, because he didn’t know what he was going to do if he kept feeling the Lord hanging out around his heart. He hadn’t been in a church building since Rosa and Lydia died. Swore he’d never go in one again after their funeral. He’d held them dying in the wreck against the Lord, as if the Lord had been driving instead of Wes. But living here, with David being so good to him and Lovella talking Bible verses with him and Tabitha letting him share in the wonder of her baby and Jo loving him so pure and simple, Wes could feel his heart softening. Twice already he’d thought about asking David to say that special prayer he sometimes talked about praying with people. The one where a man asked the Lord to save him. The one that David said the Lord always answered. The one that would change a man’s life forevermore.

  But could Wes change? And if he did, what would people, what would the Lord, expect him to do next? Would he have to walk down a church aisle and look a bunch of church people in the eye and confess to his need for the Lord?

  Maybe it would be better to just hole up in his apartment and never admit he felt a thing. Sometimes it was as if there was a war going on inside his heart. One he had no control over. One he had no idea who was going to win.

  22

  When David came down the stairs as the sun was beginning to push fingers of light over the horizon, Wes was in his chair, already dressed and sipping coffee with a couple of books in his lap, but he wasn’t reading. “Don’t you ever sleep?” David asked. “And where did the coffee come from? Is Jocie up already?”

  “Ain’t heard a peep out of her. Don’t think she’s even put the dog out yet. As for the coffee”—Wes lifted up his cup toward David—“I ain’t totally helpless. There’s a whole pot if you want to get a cup and join me. That is, if you ain’t on the way to walk with the girl.”

  David looked toward the door. He hadn’t walked with Leigh for days. He’d wanted to, but he had to take Jocie to school. It was part of their father-daughter routine. He always dropped her off at school before he went to the newspaper office. He couldn’t just suddenly tell her she’d have to start riding the school bus. She might think he was deserting her. She might think it had something to do with what had happened in July. She was already carrying around enough worry about that with feeling so to blame for Wes getting hurt. David didn’t want to add any more worry and certainly not even the shadow of doubt about how much he loved her.

  But today was Saturday. David could go. It was still early. The sun was just peeking over the horizon. Maybe he could even work up the nerve to ask Leigh out to dinner. She’d told him the day before when he went by the courthouse that she was going to visit her parents that afternoon, so maybe he could meet her somewhere in Grundy. Someplace where they had candles on the tables. Then he tried to remember how much money he had in his pocket. Probably not enough for a restaurant that keeps candles on the tables.

  David looked back at Wes. The shadows under the man’s eyes were getting darker. The skin was just hanging off his bones. The man was fading away in front of David’s eyes. His friend was hurting and not just because of his broken leg. This went deeper. Some kind of soul sickness. The doctor in Lexington called it depression when David had called to see if there was anything he could do for Wes. Dr. Curtis had offered medication but said Wes had turned the pills down while he was still in the hospital.

  “I’ll see if he’s changed his mind,” David had told the doctor. “But I doubt it. We can’t even get him to take an aspirin when the pain starts thumping in his leg.”

  “He did seem set against taking any kind of pills,” the doctor agreed. “Failing medication, you can try to get him to talk it out. Is he eating all right? Sleeping okay?”

  “Not eating much or sleeping well.”

  “Classic symptoms,” Dr. Curtis said. “He isn’t suicidal, is he?”

  “Suicidal?” David hadn’t even thought about that, although he knew what depression could do. He’d preached funerals of people who had put a gun to their head rather than face another day. But Wes wouldn’t do something like that. Not as long as Jocie was around. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then patience might be your best avenue. Most people weather these storms, and when Mr. Green is once again able to do some of the things he could do before he was hurt, he’ll most likely move away from his depression. Still, it might be best if you kept a close eye on him. Not every person who thinks about suicide talks about it.”

  So now David smiled at Wes and said, “Sure, coffee sounds great.”

  “It’s extra strong,” Wes said.

  “Of course it is, if you made it. You need a refill?”

  Wes held out his cup. “I could use it. I couldn’t carry it but half full.”

  David looked at the cup, then at the crutches lying by the chair. “How did you carry it at all?”

  Wes clamped his teeth on the handle of the cup and held his head sideways as he demonstrated. He took the cup out of his mouth and said, “I had to move pretty slow to keep from sloshing it out.”

  “Did you ever consider you might be too addicted to coffee?” David said with a laugh as he took the cup and went out to the kitchen.

  When he came back and handed Wes his filled cup, Wes said, “Better coffee addictions than some others.”

  “That’s for sure. But speaking of that, I talked to Dr. Curtis the other day.”

  Wes took a sip of his coffee before he asked, “How come?”

  “I could say it was to do with you going back to get the rods out of your cast, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.” David looked straight at Wes. “We need to do that next week, but that wasn’t why I called.”

  “I told you I wasn’t going back over to that hospital. Dr. Markum can take the cast off here.”

  “If you haven’t already trimmed it off yourself, right?” David looked down at the floor and was relieved when he didn’t see any plaster dust there.

  “I haven’t been whittling on it since I told you I’d wait a spell.”

  “Dr. Markum can’t do the rods. You’ll have to go back to Lexington for that, Wes. After that, he said he could handle it from here. It’ll just be one more time to the hospital.”

  “One more time until the next time. Them city doctors like to bleed a man dry.” Wes took another drink of coffee. “So why did you call him, David?”

  “I was worried about you, Wes.” He kept his eyes on Wes’s face. “I am worried about you.”

  Wes just looked at him for a moment before he said, “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, David. I really do, but I ain’t a child. I’m a grown man, and you don’t have to take me on as a new re
sponsibility. You’ve got enough of those as it is.”

  “You’re not a responsibility. You’re my friend, and I can’t just sit here and watch you sinking so low without trying to help.”

  “No, I guess not. So what did the good doctor say? Slip pills in my coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” David said. “Although he did say he could prescribe some pills if you wanted them.”

  “Nerve pills. He said something about them before, but he couldn’t give me no guarantee that they wouldn’t just make me crazier.”

  “You’re not crazy. You’re just feeling down because of being hurt.”

  “I do feel down,” Wes admitted. “Sometimes down for the count.”

  “And you’re not eating or sleeping.”

  “I eat some and sleep some.”

  “But not much. Not enough.” David searched for the right words to say. Words that would help Wes walk out of the dark valley he was in. He wasn’t sure the words that came to his mind were the right ones, but he said them anyway. “I’ve been praying for you.”

  “I know you have, David. You and Jo and Lovella. I feel hedged in with prayers here,” Wes said, but he didn’t look upset.

  “The Lord sometimes hedges us in with blessings.”

  Wes stared down at his coffee cup. “He took the blessing hedge away from Job.”

  “He did,” David admitted.

  “If he’d do that to a good man like Job, what might he do to a man like me?” Wes looked up at David. “So maybe it’s better to stay outside the hedge in the first place.”

  “I don’t think so,” David said. “I always want to be inside the hedge of the Lord’s love and mercy, and I’ll try to be like Job and trust him in the face of whatever happens.”

  “But I ain’t sure I’ve got that much trust, David.”

  “Maybe you need to start with just enough trust to trust what you’re feeling and stop fighting against it.”

  “You could be right, but I want to be sure it’s me doing the trusting and not just me leaning on the trust that echoes in this house. Doesn’t it have to be my own doing and not just what somebody else wants?”

  “It does. I can pray for you, but somewhere, sometime, you’ll have to take that prayer over and make it yours.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Wes looked back down at his coffee again.

  David waited a minute hoping Wes would say more, but when he didn’t, David asked, “Do you want to take the prayer over?”

  Wes mashed his mouth together and then after a moment, sighed. “Not yet, David. I think I need to get out of here, out of the hedge of your caring for me, so that I can make sure it’s me doing the praying for me and not me only pretending to pray to please you and Jo. You see what I’m saying?”

  “I think so, Wes, but there’s one thing you have to realize. You can never get out of the hedge of our love for you. Whatever you do, whatever happens, you’re part of our family now. You always will be. If you decide to join the family of God, we’d celebrate your decision with you.”

  “I don’t think I could walk down a church aisle.”

  “Once you say the prayer and mean it, the Lord will give you strength to do whatever needs to be done.”

  “‘For I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’”

  “Paul in his letter to the Philippians,” David said with a nod.

  “I’ve been thinking maybe I’ve been getting strengthened up enough to make it up the steps to my apartment. I think it’s time.” Wes smiled a little at David. “Now that I can make my own coffee.”

  “You need more than coffee,” David said.

  “Wieners aren’t hard to cook. I can get me a hook and hang a bucket on my crutches to carry things in. And Jo can run errands for me. She needs to work off some of her guilt anyhow.”

  David looked at Wes and didn’t know what to say. He was afraid to let Wes go back to the apartment, afraid he’d sink too low to remember the hedge of their love back here at the house. “How about you wait until we get the rods out of your cast? Or even better, until after Jocie’s birthday. She’s been looking forward to you being here to watch her blow out her candles. That’s not but a couple of weeks away.”

  “You can bring me back for that.”

  David thought fast. “Tell you what. Let’s make a couple of trial runs. I’ve been thinking about seeing if you’d go to the office with me sometime to look at the press. It was doing some mighty creaking last Tuesday.”

  Wes sat up a little straighter and said, “Did you oil it like I told you to?”

  “I did, but it’s still creaking. I think it’s a one-man press. It needs you to look at it.”

  Wes smiled. “Well, I guess I could ride along if you think I can get in the car.”

  “You’ll fit with no problem. Everything about you has shrunk since you came home.”

  “Then I guess we could try it this morning. If you’re sure I won’t be getting in Cupid’s way and keeping you away from walking with your girl.”

  “I’m not sure we can call her my girl yet.”

  “If you don’t mind, she won’t mind,” Wes said. “You can lay money on that.”

  “I think you probably need to have at least one date before you can claim couple status.” David stared down at the coffee in his cup and tried to think of a way to change the subject.

  “Some people just get blown right through the dating stage to something else.”

  “That might be a good way to describe me and Leigh. Something else.” David looked up at Wes and laughed.

  Wes smiled back as he said, “Why don’t you ask her out tonight?”

  “When would I study my sermon?”

  “Leigh would probably let you practice on her. And I’m betting you already have it all blocked out anyway. What are you preaching on? Love for your neighbor? No matter what color they happen to be?”

  “I’ve been thinking on it, but how’d you guess?”

  “Your editorial in this week’s Banner. You was preaching some in it.”

  “You think so? I was trying not to, but sometimes it’s hard not to preach a little when you see things going bad.” David took a sip of his coffee. It was cold.

  “Are things going bad in Hollyhill?”

  “I don’t know, Wes. Things seem peaceful enough. Mrs. Hearndon’s been back to church once with her children and a few more people didn’t bother moving to the other side of the church. Jocie said there weren’t any fights at the high school, and the little kids don’t seem to even notice anything’s different at the elementary school. And we’ve only gotten a couple of letters complaining about me putting the article about Mrs. Rowlett being the best teacher in the county on the front page. At least one of the best.”

  “So what’s bothering you, David?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just worried it’s the calm before the storm.”

  “There don’t have to be a storm. Maybe it’s just time for Hollyhill to give up its old ways and move into the twentieth century since we’re done past halfway to the next one. Skin color shouldn’t make a difference in where a person goes to school. Or buys a farm.”

  “It’s the farm that has me a little worried. I think the schools being desegregated isn’t going to be a problem. But the Hearndons, that’s a different matter.”

  “Why’s that?” Wes asked.

  “Harvey McMurtry, you know he’s the one who sold them the place. Anyway, he says he’s been hearing rumors about the Klan getting active around here.”

  “That ain’t good news.” Wes frowned and shook his head a little as he looked at David. “I got invited to a Klan meeting, conclave, whatever they call it, once.”

  “Really?” David was surprised.

  “I was down in Mississippi and I guess the fellow I was working for thought I looked like a good old boy. I was curious so I went.”

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t stay long enough to find out. Five
minutes was all it took for me to know I was in the wrong place. I waited till nobody was paying me any attention. Then I slipped away, got on my motorcycle, and didn’t stop till I was a couple of hundred miles away.”

  “What did they do?”

  “I don’t know that it was what they did, but more what they became when they all got together and put on their pointy hats. It was like they sort of joined together and became some kind of monster with a hundred heads.” Wes shivered a little at the thought. “One thing sure, they had a mighty attraction to fire. Had this huge bonfire that looked like it might have burned down the whole state if the wind had got up.”

  “I can’t see that kind of thing happening in Holly County,” David said, but even as he said it he thought it was more hope speaking than sureness. “Our people wouldn’t do that kind of thing.”

  “People can surprise you. Those people down there surprised me. Of course it wasn’t all local folks. The guy I worked for said men came in from all over the state when they had those meetings or whatever they were.”

  “But did they do anything besides talk?” David asked.

  “Beats me. I didn’t stay around long enough to hear the talk. I might have done some foolish things in my life, but I ain’t no fool. I took one look around and got a real bad feeling that maybe my invitation didn’t have a thing to do with me joining the club and a lot more to do with me being a beatnik on a motorcycle and somebody they might be wanting to practice their hate on.”

  David looked down at his coffee as if he might see the future in its dark liquid. “That’s a kind of hate we don’t need in Holly County. I’m praying what Mr. Harvey heard was just rumors and nothing more.”

  “Well, that’s a prayer I can join in with you without a problem,” Wes said. “Not that the good Lord above has any reason to listen to me the way he does you.”

  “He listens,” David said. “He hears every prayer.”