Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Her mama walked over and put her free hand on Cassidy’s daddy’s shoulder. “We’ll get more trees.”

  “And they’ll come and destroy those too. What then, Myra?”

  Her voice got stronger, sounded surer. “Then we’ll plant more trees.”

  Cassidy’s daddy shook his head. “Is that what your Lord tells you? Is that how he answers your prayers? Just keep starting over?”

  “The Bible says, ‘Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.’”

  “I can’t feel much of that right now.” He stood up, still holding a bit of the broken tree.

  “That’s because you aren’t leaning on the understanding of the Lord,” Cassidy’s mama said.

  “Don’t you be preaching at me tonight, woman.” Cassidy’s daddy threw the branch he held as far as he could into the field. But then his anger seemed to leak away, and he sounded almost sad as he said, “Not tonight.”

  They turned and began making their sad procession back to the house when Noah pointed at the sky beyond the barn. “Something’s on fire over that way,” he said.

  They stopped walking to look. Off across the fields, the sky was glowing red.

  “Oh dear Lord,” Cassidy’s mama said. “Miss Sally’s house is over there.”

  “I hope your Lord can help you understand that,” Cassidy’s daddy said.

  41

  By the time Jocie helped Miss Sally put fresh sheets on the bed in the parlor, she was beginning to wish she’d gone on to the hospital with her father and Aunt Love. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Miss Sally and Mr. Harvey. She did. A lot. But she just felt out of place here in this room of memories that was fine when the sun was shining through the windows, but sort of spooky when night shadows lurked behind the doors.

  Plus once she went to bed, she wouldn’t know till morning about Tabitha’s baby. Her father had called earlier to say they made it to the hospital and that the doctor said Tabitha was definitely getting ready to give birth, but the baby wasn’t expected to make an appearance for several more hours, maybe not till morning. Jocie’s father said Tabitha was doing fine or at least as well as could be expected for somebody about to have a baby. Or so the nurses told him. They wouldn’t let him stay with Tabitha.

  “It’s just as well you’re not here, Jocie. You wouldn’t believe how hard these chairs are out here in the waiting room. Aunt Love’s wishing she had a cushion. And the only magazines are about fishing.”

  “You like fishing,” Jocie said.

  “I like to go fishing. Not read about somebody else going fishing.”

  “No Bible?”

  “I haven’t seen one,” her father said.

  “Aunt Love can quote some verses for you.”

  “That might work,” he said. “Everything okay there with Miss Sally and Mr. Harvey?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Good. I’ll call you early tomorrow morning. By then we should have a new baby and I can come on to church. I don’t know what kind of sermon it will be. The Lord keeps telling me not to put off my sermon preparation until the last minute. Maybe I’ll start paying attention now.”

  “It’ll be okay, Dad. You can just preach the same one you did last week.”

  Her father laughed. “Are you trying to say they will all have forgotten it by now anyway?”

  “No, not that. You can just say you thought they needed to hear it again. I mean, all sermons are some the same. Believe and be saved. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Love one another. That kind of thing.”

  “The people expect me to preach a little longer than that.”

  “But why do sermons have to be so many minutes long? Is there a rule book for sermon giving?”

  “No rule book. Just the Bible,” Jocie’s father said. “Now behave yourself and don’t drive Miss Sally and Mr. Harvey crazy asking questions like that.” And then he laughed again before he said good-bye.

  Now in Miss Sally’s parlor, Jocie shut her eyes and tried to go to sleep. Mr. Harvey had offered to bring his fan down for her from his bedroom upstairs, but she’d told him she didn’t need it. And with the windows open to the night air it was hot, but not too hot to sleep. That wasn’t the problem. It was the feeling that Miss Sally’s mother’s ghost might be hovering over Jocie trying to see who was sleeping in her bed.

  Jocie told herself firmly there were no such things as ghosts, and even if there were, Miss Sally’s mother was probably just as sweet as Miss Sally and wouldn’t mind Jocie sleeping there. The spooky ghost feelings faded away, but then other worries came to poke at her. Wes on his crutches. Figuring out how to forgive Ronnie Martin—and Paulette for wanting her to. Tabitha having a baby. Not just expecting one, but actually having one. The Klan. Thinking about the men in sheets and boots was scarier than thinking about ghosts watching her.

  Jocie started repeating Psalm 23 the way she did when she couldn’t sleep at home. She was on the part about the shadow of death when she heard wheels crunching the gravel of Mr. Harvey’s driveway. At first she thought it might be her father coming to tell her about the baby, but it didn’t sound like just one car but several. Why would people be coming to see Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally in the middle of the night?

  Jocie got up and went over to the window. Up above her head she could hear the vibration of the fan on the floor of Mr. Harvey’s bedroom. Outside, it wasn’t cars but pickup trucks. They stopped before they got to the house, and men started getting out. For a minute Jocie thought she must have actually fallen asleep and was in her dream when she saw their white robes. They were moving without any noise. Surely that could only happen in a dream.

  One of the men carried a torch high above his head. Behind him, several men carried a wooden cross. Jocie wanted to yell, but her mouth wouldn’t work. That’s the way it sometimes was with dreams. A person was frozen, unable to run or do anything.

  The men laid the cross down in the yard in front of the porch. Then other men were splashing something on it. That was when Jocie knew for sure she wasn’t dreaming. She could smell kerosene. One of the men laughed softly as he told the other man to be careful not to get his robe soaked or he might get lit up too. The sound of the man’s voice was muffled by the hood over his head.

  And then the man threw his torch on the wooden cross and jumped back as the flames swooshed up and licked the porch roof. One of the other men ran over to them and said, “You idiots! You put it too close to the house. We didn’t want to burn them alive. Just put a scare into them.”

  The flames licked out at the dry grass, and the whole yard was suddenly on fire. Jocie ran for the steps. Smoke was already sweeping through the house, and the flames crackled as they bit into the porch roof.

  “Miss Sally! Mr. Harvey!” she screamed. “Wake up!”

  Outside there were some loud bangs and lots of shouting. Jocie couldn’t make out the words, but she could hear the panic. The same feeling was blasting through her. Then even the shouts faded away as the roar of the fire grew louder. It was hot in the stairway and hard to breathe. Jocie pulled her gown up over her nose and mouth, and kept going.

  Miss Sally met her at the door to her bedroom. She had on her robe and slippers with a hair net over her gray hair. “What’s happening?”

  “The house is on fire!”

  “Oh, my word! We’ve got to get Harvey.”

  Jocie started banging on Mr. Harvey’s bedroom door. The smoke was getting thicker. She pushed the door open. Mr. Harvey was sitting on the side of his bed holding his chest. Aunt Love did that a lot, but most of the time it didn’t mean anything. Jocie wasn’t so sure about Mr. Harvey.

  Miss Sally moved past her and put her hands on Mr. Harvey’s shoulders. “Get up, Harvey! We’ve got to get out of here.”

  He just looked at her as if he hadn’t quite heard what she said. Then he took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Do I smell smoke?”

  “The house is on fire,” Jocie said. “Please,
Mr. Harvey, we’ve got to hurry.”

  He stood up and reached for his pants. Miss Sally yanked them away from him. “You don’t have time to get dressed, Harvey. I’ll carry them for you. Jocie, get his shoes. Once we get outside, then you can put them on.”

  Jocie grabbed the shoes sitting on the floor by the bed and led the way out toward the stairs. She was almost afraid to look back to see if they were following her. What would she do if they weren’t? She whispered a prayer. “Dear Lord, help us.”

  The smoke was getting thicker, swirling around them, making her cough. She stopped at the top of the stairs. It was too late. Maybe she hadn’t prayed soon enough. Flames had raced from the porch and across the hall to the stairs. The bottom step was burning. Jocie tried to take little breaths to keep from breathing in the smoke, but the flames were sucking up all the air. It was so hot that she couldn’t breathe.

  Behind her, Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally were coughing. Jocie’s lungs were hurting and black spots were forming in front of her eyes. She couldn’t pass out. She’d die if she passed out and so would Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally.

  Then Mr. Harvey was pulling her back from the top of the stairs and talking in her ear. “We’ll have to go out the window in Sally’s room.”

  Out the window. Jocie might do that, but dear Lord, could Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally? Still, it was that or trying to run through the flames to one of the downstairs doors. And none of them could do that.

  Mr. Harvey opened Miss Sally’s bedroom door. The flames swooshed up the staircase like a live thing, ready to devour the fresh air from the bedroom. Jocie pushed Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally inside and slammed shut the bedroom door. She took a couple of breaths, but that just seemed to make her cough harder. Outside there was an unnatural glow.

  Mr. Harvey was holding his chest again as he leaned on Miss Sally. “Do we need to tie sheets together to make a rope to the ground?” Jocie asked.

  “No, child,” Miss Sally said. “The back porch roof slants away from the window. We can crawl out and over to the cellar mound and down. Me and Harvey used to do it all the time when we were kids just for the fun of it.”

  Jocie looked at them. “You’re not kids now.”

  Miss Sally actually smiled. “You go first and help us remember how.”

  “No. I’m okay. You go, then Mr. Harvey, and I’ll come last so I can help you if you need me to.”

  “No time to argue,” Mr. Harvey said. He was panting a little. “Just push the screen out and go, girl. We’ll need you out there on the roof to keep us from rolling off when we come out.”

  Jocie knocked the screen out of the window, dropped Mr. Harvey’s shoes outside, and then slid out after them. The roof was right under her feet, not even a full step down. Maybe they were going to get out after all. She picked up Mr. Harvey’s shoes and moved them out of the way. She wished she’d put on her own shoes when she’d gotten out of bed to go look out the window. The roof shingles were scratchy under her feet.

  Miss Sally hiked up her nightgown, grabbed her leg below the knee, and pulled it up until she could push her foot out the window. Jocie helped her balance as she pulled her other foot out and stood up on the porch.

  “It’s more slanted than I remember, Harvey. Be careful,” Miss Sally said back in the window.

  “Hurry, Mr. Harvey!” Jocie could smell the fire coming after them.

  Mr. Harvey stuck one foot out and then sat straddling the window frame in his nightshirt. Sweat was running down his face.

  “You two go on ahead,” he said after a couple of seconds. “I’ll catch up.”

  “I’m not going without you, Harvey. So you just take a couple of deep breaths and come on out of there,” Miss Sally said.

  “Go, Sally. For the girl’s sake.”

  Jocie’s heart was pounding, and she imagined she could feel the shingles heating up under her feet. Still, she couldn’t run away and leave them stranded on the roof. Jocie moved over and put her arm around Mr. Harvey. “You can lean on me,” she said. “Please, Mr. Harvey. You have to get out. We can’t leave you here. We just can’t.”

  “No, I suppose not.” He sounded very tired, but he leaned toward Jocie and held on to the window frame as he worked his other leg out through the window. He was panting again. He looked up when he stood down on the roof and said, “Dear Lord, just a few more minutes.”

  Jocie wasn’t sure if he was talking to her and Miss Sally, or the Lord. Then they were making their way over the shingles to where the roof dropped down to almost touch the dirt mounded up over the root cellar. The fire was licking up the sides of the front of the house and coming through the roof to light up the sky, but the back of the house was still okay.

  They were off the cellar and moving away from the house when the men in white were suddenly around them. Eyes stared out through the hoods at Jocie. Just like in her dream, except Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally weren’t with her in the dream.

  Mr. Harvey straightened up. His anger seemed to give him strength. “You men did this!”

  “We didn’t aim to burn the house. We just wanted to give you a message,” one of the men said through his hood.

  “Bob, is that you?” Mr. Harvey peered over at the man.

  “No, you don’t know any of us,” one of the other men said.

  “It doesn’t matter what I know. The Lord knows all of you. You can’t hide your evil under hoods and expect the Lord not to see you.”

  “You brought this down on yourself,” the man in front said. “You should have never sold your land to that—”

  “Go! Leave! You’ve done enough harm for one night,” Mr. Harvey said, not letting him finish. His voice was cold. “And I’ll pray the good Lord can forgive you.”

  “We don’t need your prayers, old man,” one of the men said, stepping toward Mr. Harvey. But a couple of the other men grabbed the man’s arms and pulled him back. They fell back out of the light of the fire and melted away into the night.

  From the front of the house, Jocie heard truck doors slamming and motors starting up. And then there was only the noise of the fire crackling and devouring all Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally’s things. Jocie wished she could run back inside and grab the old clock off the mantel that Miss Sally said had belonged to her father. It had never quit ticking through all those years, and now it was burning. All their precious keepsakes were burning.

  They moved a few more feet away from the house and turned to look back at the flames leaping through the roof toward the sky now. “So fast,” Miss Sally whispered.

  And then Mr. Harvey leaned forward and clutched his chest again. “I’m really sorry to do this to you right now, Sally—” he gasped for breath before he was able to go on—“but I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Oh no, Harvey. No!” Miss Sally cried.

  But Mr. Harvey wasn’t listening. He was staring straight ahead. “Look, Sally. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? They must be angels.” And then he was slumping.

  Jocie tried to hold Mr. Harvey up, but he was too heavy. He slid away from her arms down to the ground. Miss Sally dropped to her knees beside him. She put her ear down on his chest. After a couple of seconds she said, “He’s still breathing. We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

  “But how?” Jocie said. Miss Sally couldn’t drive, but Jocie could if she had to, at least to a neighbor’s house. But she and Miss Sally would never be able to get Mr. Harvey in the car by themselves. They wouldn’t be able to lift him off the ground.

  “I don’t know,” Miss Sally said. It sounded as if she was crying.

  Pray. The word echoed in Jocie’s head. The Lord would help her. Hadn’t he always helped her before? And hadn’t he helped Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally by putting Jocie in their house so she could wake them up when the house caught on fire? Another five minutes and they wouldn’t have gotten out. “Dear Lord, please help us. Show me what to do next.”

  She’d no sooner finished whispering the prayer than she saw
headlights out on the road. “There’s a car coming.”

  “Praise the Lord,” Miss Sally said. “Go get them, and bring them here.”

  Jocie started around the house, but then hesitated. “What if it’s some of those men coming back?”

  “If it is, they’re surely coming back to help. Use what the Lord sends.”

  It wasn’t any of the men. It was Noah and his whole family, even the twins and Cassidy. Cassidy’s eyes were big as they stared out of the car window at Jocie and then at the flames behind her.

  Noah and his father carried Mr. Harvey to the car. Mr. Hearndon touched Mrs. Hearndon’s arm. “You take them. Noah and me will stay here and try to keep the fire from spreading to the other buildings.”

  Jocie and Miss Sally climbed in the backseat with Cassidy and the twins. Cassidy scooted as close to Miss Sally as she could get, and Elise climbed over into Jocie’s lap and said, “Hot.”

  Jocie pulled her tight to her with one arm and put her other arm around Eli. He snuggled against her without a word as his mother pulled out on the road to head toward the nearest hospital in Grundy. Too far away. Other cars, neighbors Miss Sally said, passed them headed toward the fire.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Mrs. Hearndon said in a voice not much over a whisper. “Watch over our menfolk this night. Bring them into the sunlight of another day.”

  Miss Sally reached up and put her hand on Mrs. Hearndon’s shoulder. “The neighbors are good people. They weren’t part of any of this.”

  “I pray you’re right,” Mrs. Hearndon said before she mashed on the gas and sent the car flying through the night.

  Jocie tightened her arms around the twins, and Cassidy scooted even closer to Miss Sally. In the front seat they could hear Mr. Harvey’s labored breathing. Jocie kept her eyes wide open, but she never stopped praying all the way to the hospital.