Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “In the ladies room. We were heading home.” He could barely keep from bombarding her with questions, but he’d sat with enough people in the aftermath of a tragic event to know it would be easier for her if he didn’t demand to know everything at once. He had to wait for her to be ready to tell him more. He put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Oh,” Jocie said. “Does that mean Tabitha had her baby?”

  “She did. A beautiful little boy.”

  For a second Jocie’s eyes had a flicker of life back in them. “A boy. Oops, guess Tabitha will have to come up with a new name.” She almost smiled as she looked up at him out of her smoke-rimmed eyes, but then she was coughing again. Hard coughs that shook her whole body.

  “That she will,” David said as he tightened his hold on her shoulders. He wanted to take the cough from her, put it inside his own body. More than that, he wanted to take the sadness, the bad things that had happened to take the joy out of her eyes, and make them disappear. He wanted them to be able to laugh and talk about Tabitha’s baby and not have to worry about death. Surely she was wrong. Surely Mr. Harvey wasn’t dead.

  Jocie took a couple of breaths when she finally stopped coughing and then wiped her eyes on a corner of the blanket. “I feel like I’m trying to cough up my whole insides. Mrs. Hearndon says I must have breathed too much smoke.”

  “Mrs. Hearndon? Is she here too?”

  “She’s in the emergency room with Miss Sally.” She coughed again.

  “I think that’s where you need to be too. We can talk on the way down there.”

  “But what about Aunt Love? We can’t just leave her up here by herself. She’d be lost.” Jocie’s eyes turned sad again. “I don’t want to lose anybody else tonight.”

  David looked over Jocie’s head down the hall toward the ladies room. “She’s coming,” he said.

  Aunt Love clapped her hands over her heart and looked faint when she saw Jocie. “My stars, child. What has happened to you?”

  “I’m all right, Aunt Love. Honest. Just coughing a little. From the smoke. And the air, it was so hot. I think it scorched my nose.” Jocie pushed on the side of her nose and took a breath.

  “Was there a fire?” Aunt Love frowned and looked even more worried. “At our house?”

  “No, I wasn’t at our house, remember,” Jocie said quietly. Her eyes turned inward as if she was seeing it play out again in her head. “It was Miss Sally’s house. The whole thing just went up in a big swoosh. Everything was burning up. Even their clock. You know, the one on Miss Sally’s mantel that had never stopped ticking. I wanted to go get it, but I couldn’t go back inside. Nobody could. Miss Sally said none of that mattered anyway. She just didn’t want to lose Mr. Harvey.”

  David pushed the elevator down button, and when the door slid open, he ushered them inside. “What happened to Mr. Harvey?” he asked as the doors shut and the elevator started down.

  “He didn’t burn up.” Jocie trembled a little and pulled her blanket closer around her, but she kept talking. “We got out, but the house went fast. We had to climb through a window in Miss Sally’s bedroom out on the roof. I didn’t think Mr. Harvey was going to make it. He kept stopping and talking to the Lord. Not like me praying, but talking to him as if he was standing right there beside us. And then once we got down to the ground and the men were gone, he said he saw angels.”

  “The men? What men?” David asked.

  “The Klan. They had on hoods, so I don’t know who they were, but Mr. Harvey knew one of them. He called him Bob.”

  “The Klan burned down Mr. Harvey’s house?” David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Surely not Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally’s house. Everybody loved them.

  “I don’t think they aimed to. It just happened. They had this big wooden cross they put in the front yard. Then they threw kerosene all over it and lit it, but one of the men started yelling that it was too close to the house.”

  “Didn’t they know you were inside?” Aunt Love asked.

  “I guess so. Well, not me, but Miss Sally and Mr. Harvey. They didn’t know I was there watching them.” Jocie stared at the elevator doors for a minute before she started talking again. “But I saw them. I was in that room downstairs that used to be Miss Sally’s mother’s, but I was having trouble going to sleep. I was thinking about Tabitha and everything. Anyway, I heard them when they came. I should have run and got Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally then, but I thought maybe I had actually fallen asleep and was dreaming.”

  Jocie looked over at David and went on. “You see, I’d been having this dream about them. About the men in hoods, ever since they were in town, so I thought I might be dreaming. But I wasn’t. I knew that as soon as I smelled the kerosene. I shouldn’t have waited so long to go get Mr. Harvey and Miss Sally.”

  “It’s okay, baby. You couldn’t know the house was going to catch fire,” David said softly.

  Jocie got too still and shut her eyes for a moment. The elevator came to a stop on the bottom floor, but David pressed in the close-door button. She needed to finish telling them so they could take some of the pain from her into their own hearts.

  Jocie licked her lips and started talking again. “I’ve never seen fire like that. One of the men had a torch, and when he threw it down to the kerosene, there was this awful explosion of flames. The whole yard caught fire and then the porch. It was like the fire turned into some kind of monster and it was hungry. Very hungry.”

  Aunt Love whispered a bit of Scripture. “‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’”

  “I was afraid, Aunt Love. I thought we were going to burn up. Smoke was everywhere and I couldn’t breathe. I got Miss Sally and Mr. Harvey awake. Miss Sally wouldn’t let Mr. Harvey put on his pants and shoes. We carried them for him. We went to the stairs, but the fire had gotten inside. It wasn’t just smoke anymore. The bottom steps were on fire. And the walls down there. It was so hot. I couldn’t breathe. Things started going black in front of my eyes.”

  “What were the men outside doing?” David asked.

  “They were yelling, shooting guns, I think. But then I couldn’t hear them anymore. The fire was too loud. Mr. Harvey said we’d have to go out the window. I didn’t think they could, but they did. It wasn’t too hard. But Mr. Harvey kept holding his chest, and then when we got down on the ground, the men in the sheets came up around us. Just like in my dream. They said the house burning down was all Mr. Harvey’s fault. For selling his land to Noah’s father. Then they left and the fire was burning behind us and Mr. Harvey told Miss Sally he thought he was having a heart attack and then he saw angels.”

  “How did you get to the hospital?”

  “Noah’s mother. They saw the fire and came. Mrs. Hearndon is with Miss Sally. And Cassidy and Eli and Elise. They’re all down there. Eli and Elise went to sleep, but Cassidy’s too scared to go to sleep. I wish she didn’t have to be so scared.” Jocie leaned against David.

  “So do I, sweetie,” David said as he rubbed her hair.

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “But I guess she has reason. The men went to their house first. Didn’t burn anything there, just tore up all their apple trees. All of them. Ran over them with their trucks and broke them up.” Jocie looked up at David. “Why did the Lord let them do that, Daddy? Why didn’t he stop them?”

  “I don’t know, Jocie.”

  “Why did those men want to hurt Miss Sally and Mr. Harvey?”

  Jocie was still looking at David, waiting for him to say something to help her make sense of what had happened, but he had no answers. “I don’t know the answer to that either, baby. Some things are just beyond understanding,” he said.

  Aunt Love spoke up. “‘For their feet run to evil.’”

  Evil. That surely was the only explanation. Men allowing hatred to rule their actions. David took his finger off the close-door button. The elevator doors slid open, and they were back in the antiseptic confines of the hospital.

  A nurse led them ba
ck to the curtained alcove where Miss Sally sat on an examining table. Myra Hearndon sat in a chair beside the table with Eli asleep in her lap. Elise was stretched out asleep on a hospital blanket on the floor. Cassidy was leaning against her mother with her eyes closed, but when they came through the curtains, the little girl opened her eyes and looked at them. Jocie was right. The child was scared. Deep down scared.

  Some of that same fear, along with sorrow, was in Myra Hearndon’s eyes as she looked at David and then back to Miss Sally. “Oh, Rev. Brooke, I’m so glad Jocie found you. The doctors want to check her lungs. Just to be sure she’s okay.”

  Miss Sally looked small and forlorn, sitting on the examining table with the hospital gown draped around her and a blanket over her knees. Somebody had washed some of the smoke and soot off her face, but there were still traces of black around her eyes and nose. And yet she looked at David and smiled. “The child, has she had her baby?”

  David thought he might cry, but he swallowed the tears and managed a smile for Miss Sally. “She did. A boy, six pounds seven ounces.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Miss Sally said as, for just a moment, the tiny alcove was filled with the miracle of birth instead of the sadness of death. “Harvey would have been so happy. He would have been promising him a ride on his tractor.” Then her face clouded a bit as she looked at Myra. “Did the tractor burn too?”

  “I’m sure Alex and Noah and the neighbors were able to save the tractor,” Myra said.

  “Oh, I hope so. Harvey loved that old tractor,” Miss Sally said. “I remember when he got it. He was just like a little boy with a new toy.”

  A nurse came in and said too many people were with Miss Sally and that the doctors were ready for Jocie. Jocie said Aunt Love could go with her, that they were just going to make her do some breathing stuff the way they had with Miss Sally and maybe take an x-ray. Myra stood up to take Cassidy to the restroom.

  “Lay Eli down there with Elise, Myra,” Miss Sally said. “If they fuss about it, I’ll just tell them to hush, and Brother David can help with them if they happen to wake up before you get back.” Miss Sally smiled at Cassidy. “And get your mommy to get you a soft drink out of the machine down there, sweetheart. I know you have to be thirsty. You’ve got some change, don’t you, Brother David?”

  David handed Myra all the change he had in his pocket after she laid Eli down on the floor. The little boy’s eyelids didn’t even flicker as he settled beside his sister on the blanket.

  “You can’t argue with her,” Myra said with a smile toward Miss Sally as she took the coins. Then she turned toward David and lowered her voice a little. “She’s just so kind. You know, she’s not even mad. I want to tear apart something, maybe everything, but she says the Lord will make something good come of this.” Her eyes filled with tears. “And I know that’s true, but what they did was still wicked.”

  And then David was alone with Miss Sally and the two sleeping toddlers. He stood close beside her and held her hands for a moment. All around them outside the curtains there was noise as the hospital personnel took care of emergencies, but he and Miss Sally seemed to be in a pocket of deep silence. Finally David asked, “What about Mr. Harvey?”

  “He’s gone,” Miss Sally said sadly. “They told us for sure a little while ago, but I knew it back at the house.”

  “I’m sorry . . . Did they think it was a heart attack?”

  “Heart attack, broken heart, sorrow. Whatever name you want to give it. I think he could have stood it if it had been lightning striking the house and burning it down, but for men he knew to be doing it was just more than he could bear.”

  “Jocie said he knew one of the men. That he called him by name. Bob.”

  “Well, there’s no knowing for sure, and Bob is a common name.”

  “Did you recognize any of them, Miss Sally?”

  “It’s hard to say. They had on hoods, you know.” Miss Sally dropped her eyes away from David’s. “The sheriff was in here a little bit ago asking me the same thing, but I wouldn’t want to accuse a man when I couldn’t be sure.”

  “But they need to be punished for what they’ve done.”

  Miss Sally looked up at him again. “I’m going to leave that up to the Lord, Brother David. He can take care of all that for me. And for Harvey.” Her face softened a bit. “You know, we wouldn’t either of us have made it out of the fire if your little girl hadn’t been there with us. We’d have burned up in our beds for sure. I’m sorry she had to be part of it, though. To see the hate. It’s pierced her heart, Brother David. That and Harvey going on.”

  “I know. I’ll talk to her later.” After he prayed for answers himself.

  “Tell her Harvey’s okay. That he’s in a better place.”

  “I’m still sorry he’s gone. I’m going to miss him.”

  “I know, Brother David.” She patted his hand. “But you can’t be wishing a person back no matter how much you love him once he’s seen the angels. He went right on with them, you know. Ran right out of his body and left that fiery hell behind us. Took off across the fields with them straight up to heaven. If the fire hadn’t been crackling and popping so loud, we could have probably heard him laughing.”

  Miss Sally blinked away her tears and laughed a little herself at the thought. “I know he kept breathing till after we got him to the hospital, but it was just because his spirit took off so fast his body got caught by surprise. As soon as he saw those angels coming after him, he was gone. I know he was.”

  “Do you wish you could have gone along with him?”

  “Oh, no, Brother David.” She looked surprised he could even think such a thing. “The Lord’s still got some things for me to do down here. I think that’s why he put your sweet little girl there with us tonight.” She looked over at the two children curled asleep on the floor. “The Lord knows what he’s doing. He’s just given me a family, you know. Myra says I can come live with them for as long as I want. The Lord’s hand is in that. I know it is.”

  “But will you be safe? Jocie said the Klan had been at their house too.”

  “Now don’t you be worrying. I told you the sheriff was in here a bit ago. And Jimmy, he promises me that wherever I go to stay, he’ll be sure to see that I’m safe. See, the Lord is going to use this. If Jimmy keeps me safe, he’ll have to keep Myra and Alex safe. Don’t you think?”

  “I pray so,” David said. “Maybe we should pray so together.”

  He held her hands and felt strength coming through to him as he prayed. Here she was the one who’d lost her brother and all her possessions and yet she was pushing strength toward him.

  When he said amen, she told him, “Now you go on and see about Jocie. Make sure she’s okay. She took an awful chance running up the stairs after us with the smoke so bad.” She squeezed his hands before she turned them loose. “I’ll be just fine. Myra and little Cassidy will be back in a few minutes. Myra will take care of me.

  “And you tell all the folk at Mt. Pleasant what I told you about Harvey and the angels. That way maybe they won’t be so sad. Tell them that we’ll be having Homecoming next week same as always. Harvey would have wanted us to.”

  The next morning the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church members came and sat in the pews the same as always, but they didn’t have church the same as always. David didn’t preach a sermon. They didn’t even sing any songs. Jessica Sanderson tried playing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” but she didn’t get through the first verse before she just stood up and went back and sat in the second pew with her family.

  There wasn’t a dry eye in the church when David told them what Miss Sally had told him to say. And everybody prayed. Really prayed. There had probably never been a better message straight from the Lord in all the many years the Mt. Pleasant Church had been meeting. It was a message that didn’t have to come out of a preacher’s mouth. It was a message that just went heart to heart.

  44

  Mr. Harvey’s funeral was on Wedn
esday afternoon at two o’clock. Hollyhill shut down. Jocie didn’t go to school. She didn’t go Monday or Tuesday either. She was still coughing, still had that nasty smoke smell in her nose. She could have gone to school, but she just didn’t want to, and her father said she didn’t have to. At least, until after the funeral.

  Besides, Wes had needed her to help get the Banner out. Her father was busy helping Miss Sally. He took Miss Sally to Hazelton’s Funeral Home on Monday morning to get everything arranged for Mr. Harvey’s funeral service. And then he and Mrs. Hearndon took her out to see what was left of her house. He looked grim when he brought his film back to the office for Wes to develop for the paper. That was all he’d done for this week’s issue.

  He’d said he didn’t care whether they printed a paper this week or not, but Zella said they had to. She said they were just like the post office that never let anything stop the mail. Blizzards, floods, gloom of night, whatever. She said it had to be the same with the Banner. They couldn’t just decide to skip a week.

  “Why, if we don’t put out some kind of paper, there will be people lined up here Thursday morning with their hands out for a refund for this week’s cost of their subscriptions,” she’d told Jocie’s father. “Can you imagine what kind of headache that would be? Refunding a week’s worth of their subscription.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Jocie’s father said, but he didn’t sound too sure of it.

  “You know some of them would. Besides, we need the money from the counter sales to stay out of the red, and the people that have bought ads have a right to see them in the paper when they thought they would be in there.” She looked hard at Jocie’s father. “I’m as tore up as anybody about Harvey. He was a fine man, a godly man, but he wouldn’t have wanted us to just sit down and hold our heads in our hands and say ‘oh, me.’”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Well, no, you’re helping Sally, which you ought to be doing, but Harvey would be the first to tell us to go on about our lives, and part of that is putting out a paper. Besides, don’t you think this is a story that ought to be told? As a testimony to him. To Harvey.”