Orchard of Hope

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Cassidy had heard them. It was in the middle of the night, but Cassidy had been awake. She was awake a lot anymore. She got up out of her bed and went out into the living room to look out the window to make sure the men in the trucks weren’t coming back. She moved real quiet to keep from waking up Miss Sally, who’d been sleeping on the couch ever since the men burned down her house and made Mr. Harvey die, but Miss Sally was already awake. She was sitting up on the couch in the moonlight coming through the front windows.

  Cassidy looked close at her face to see if what her mama and daddy had been saying made her cry, but she didn’t look worried. She smiled at Cassidy and held out her arms to her. Cassidy forgot about checking out the window as Miss Sally held her close.

  “It’s all right, Cassidy sweetheart,” Miss Sally whispered in her ear. “Don’t you worry a minute. The Lord is going to take care of us. He’s going to keep us safe and bring your daddy some new trees. That will make your daddy feel better.”

  “How do you know?” Cassidy asked.

  “The Lord told me,” Miss Sally said. “And I believe him. You can always believe the Lord. He knows.”

  Now the morning service was over. They’d eaten all the food people had brought and were back in the church house with the preacher talking. Cassidy hoped it wouldn’t be much longer before they could go home. She wanted to be at home instead of here with all these eyes on her, seeing her black skin and wanting to hurt her because of it. She could just crawl back in her safe cave, but that was sort of scary too, since back in there she couldn’t touch her mama. She felt better when she could touch her mama. And now, sitting between her mama and Miss Sally while the preacher talked, Cassidy felt almost safe enough to shut her eyes and take a nap.

  Then Miss Sally was standing up, going down the aisle toward the front, and that side of Cassidy’s body felt too cold. Cassidy had known Miss Sally was going to go up front to talk. Miss Sally explained it all to her that morning on the way to church, how she had to give the history of the church since Mr. Harvey wasn’t there to do it. A few minutes before she stood up, she’d whispered to Cassidy to not worry if she cried a little while she was talking. That the right kind of tears were good.

  Miss Sally stood up behind the pulpit. It was extra quiet in the church as Miss Sally looked down at the sheets of paper she had in her hands. And then she looked out at the church people and said, “This is the annual reading of the history of Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church founded by thirteen men and women in the year 1821.”

  Miss Sally touched her eyes with her handkerchief and then said, “Now all of you know that Harvey has been doing this ever since 1940 and that, before that, our father read the history for many years. Harvey knew it all by heart. When this building was built. When the sidewalk was laid. Who the preachers were and when they were here. I never heard him say one bad word about any of the preachers we’ve had here. Not one. Even when the rest of us weren’t being quite as nice. Of course, we weren’t talking about you, Brother Perry. We all liked you.”

  Miss Sally smiled over at the man who’d done the preaching that morning and then looked back at the people. “Most of you out there know the history by heart too, but you liked hearing Harvey tell it, and he liked telling it to anybody who’d stand still to listen. And on Homecoming Day he had a captive audience.”

  Cassidy jumped when a few people chuckled. Then everything went quiet again as Miss Sally stopped and swallowed. She kept her mouth mashed together for a long time before she folded up her papers and moved them off to the side of the pulpit. Now there was absolutely no noise at all in the church. Even Eli and Elise were sitting still, watching Miss Sally. Cassidy scooted over closer to her mama and wished she was on the other side of her mama between her and Noah.

  Miss Sally started talking again. “So since you already know the history, I’m not going to read it today. Next year you can find a new deacon to give the report. Today I’m going to stand here and use the history-reading time to tell you what Harvey would tell you if somehow he could come across the great divide between us and talk to us. Not that I think he wants to come back across that divide. He ran off to heaven with the angels, and now he’s up there with the Lord. So the first thing I think he would tell you is that he’s happy. Happy the way none of us can even imagine, but the way all of us, if our hearts are right, won’t have to imagine someday. We’ll be there. We’ll know about the kind of happy Harvey’s feeling.

  “Now all of you know neither me nor Harvey ever got married. Harvey had a girl once, but she married somebody else. Broke his heart and he never went out courting again. Me, nobody ever came calling. I prayed about it when I was young. And even harder when I was not so young. I wanted to marry. I saw you here at church with your children and grandchildren, and I wanted a family so much it tore a hole inside me, but the Lord didn’t answer that prayer. I used to think it might be because maybe I was just too ugly, but I look out there at you and some of you aren’t a bit prettier than I am, and you’re sitting there surrounded by your children.”

  There was a little more laughter as Miss Sally smiled out at the people. Then tears were in her eyes again. “You know Harvey. You know what a tender heart he had, how he cared for the helpless things. He knew how I felt and he prayed with me, but when the years passed and the Lord didn’t send a husband my way, he told me that the Lord must have something else planned for my life. Something special.

  “That’s another thing Harvey would tell you if he was here today. That the Lord has a plan for everybody, and everybody has a place in the kingdom of God. He said there were always children to love, and so I took the children here at the church into my heart. I look around and see so many of you back today, and it makes my heart glad that you are remembering to honor the Lord and your families. I’ve got a list at home of every child who was ever in my Sunday school class.”

  A frown flickered across Miss Sally’s face. “Well, at least I did have a list. Now I guess the list is just here in my heart.” She put her hand up over her heart for a second. “And I thought that was what the Lord intended for me. That you were the family he aimed me to have. Until Harvey decided to sell the farm over on Hoopole Road.

  “Our cousin Ben—you remember Ben, our aunt Clara’s youngest boy. He moved on up to Chicago some years ago. Claims he likes it up there in the north. Snow and all. Anyway, he said he knew a man who’d been wanting to buy some land to grow an orchard. Well, as soon as Ben said that, Harvey could already see his fields full of apple and peach trees. He was so excited. He felt like the Lord had ordained that farm for something special. An orchard of hope.”

  Miss Sally looked straight at Cassidy when she said that. Cassidy blinked away tears at the thought of her daddy’s orchard of hope being just broken sticks now, but she kept looking at Miss Sally as she went on talking.

  “So we sold it to them. We’d never seen them, but Ben said they were good people and that was good enough for us. He didn’t mention anything about color, and it never occurred to us to ask. I’m glad we didn’t.” Miss Sally looked at Cassidy’s mama and smiled. “Because you know what? After all these years, when I thought I was way too old to even think about having a daughter, the Lord sent me one. She wasn’t born to me, but the minute I saw her she was in my heart, and I knew the Lord had done it. That’s the only way it could have happened.”

  Cassidy’s mama had tears rolling out of her eyes and down her cheeks. One of the tears fell on Cassidy’s arm.

  “The Lord does love us. ‘Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ He wants to do that. And he has done that many times for many of you and for me. I wanted a daughter and now I have one. I wanted to be a granny and now I am. Maybe not by the natural order of things, but like Paul, who was an apostle as one born out of due time. I’m a granny by the Lord’s special dispensation.” Miss Sally looked at Noah and Eli and Elise, and last of all, she settled her eyes on Cassidy.

  The
n she was looking at the other people, the white people. “And I think that’s the most important thing Harvey would tell you if he was here. He’d tell you that the color of our skin doesn’t matter one little bit, that the Lord loves what’s inside that skin. And that’s what we should love too. That’s what Harvey would say—and that he’s waiting for the day when we all join him at that homecoming of all homecomings. The one he just had early last Sunday morning when the angels came down to escort him to paradise. May you all have the hope of that homecoming in your hearts.

  “Last of all, Harvey would tell you bad things happened because some people let evil take control of them, but the Lord is making good come out of it. I can see that good in your faces and feel it in the love of your hearts. I know you will embrace my new family.”

  Cassidy stood up. Her heart was beating hard inside her chest, but she knew what she had to do. Her mama reached out a hand to stop her, but Cassidy stepped away from her touch. It was scary, standing there not touching her mama, but then she moved out to the aisle and, with her eyes on Miss Sally, she went straight to the front of the church and climbed up on the podium to stand beside Miss Sally. To stand by her granny.

  46

  Jocie had been in a lot of church services, attended a lot of revival meetings, heard a lot of preachers urging people to come down the aisle and turn their lives over to the Lord, and sometimes they did. She had once herself. But whatever happened at Mt. Pleasant Church after Miss Sally quit talking and Cassidy walked up the aisle to climb up on the podium to stand beside her was different. It was as if the Lord had heard them singing “Showers of Blessings” that morning and now was raining them down on everybody in the church building.

  Maybe it was all Mr. Harvey’s doing, the same as the rain they had after his funeral to end the drought. Maybe now Mr. Harvey was up there telling the Lord what needed to happen at Mt. Pleasant Church to make folks there better and happier.

  Jocie was already feeling tingles up and down her spine and getting what Aunt Love called holy goose bumps before Wes looked over at her.

  “You know, if that little bitty girl can make it down that aisle as scared as she’s been, then I guess I can. Maybe I’ll just go on down there and ask your daddy to say that prayer with me.”

  Jocie wasn’t sure she could trust her ears, but Wes was reaching for his crutches. Her heart bounced around like crazy inside her as she put her hand on his arm and asked, “You want me to go with you?”

  “No, I’m a big boy. And this is between me and the Lord.” Wes stood up and swung down the aisle on his crutches.

  By now everybody in the church was standing up. Jocie wasn’t sure why except that it didn’t seem possible to stay sitting down. Nobody was singing “Just As I Am” or any of the other invitation hymns, but it didn’t matter. The invitation was floating around in the air, touching all of them.

  Jocie’s dad met Wes at the front of the church, and she thought he might break out in a dance he looked so happy. Then Bob Jessup and his wife were walking down the aisle to rededicate their lives. When Miss Sally came down off the podium to give him a hug, Mr. Jessup started crying. Not little tears that just slipped out of the corner of the eyes like Jocie had seen some men cry, but big boo-hoo tears. He tried to say something to the church, but he couldn’t talk. His wife led him over to the front pew and helped him find his handkerchief. More people came forward to promise to live better for Christ. Even people who weren’t members at Mt. Pleasant and were just visiting for the Homecoming service.

  What with the way everybody in the church seemed to be making some kind of decision, Jocie wasn’t surprised when Tabitha stepped out of the pew, carrying her baby. But it must’ve surprised the other people in the church. It got quiet again for a minute as Tabitha stood in front of the church and said, “My baby’s father didn’t want him. He wanted me to do something to see that he was never born, but I couldn’t do that. I want to thank all of you for loving him even before he was born and for loving him still now that you see him.” She looked down at her baby a minute and then held him up as if presenting him to the church. “I named him Stephen Lee. Stephen for a baby a mother lost a long time ago and Lee for Mr. Harvey. He would have liked that, I think.”

  More tears started flowing. Things hadn’t calmed down much from that when Leigh went down the aisle to move her membership to Mt. Pleasant since, as she told them, she was there all the time anyway. And Jocie’s father looked like that was exactly where he wanted Leigh to be.

  Jocie was beginning to think the church was going to explode with all the blessings hitting everybody. She wanted to run down the aisle to be there beside Wes and her father, but for some reason her feet stayed nailed to the floor where she was. It was like the Lord was telling her not yet. That more had to happen.

  And more did happen. Noah and his mother moved out of their pew and carried Eli and Elise down the aisle. At first Jocie thought it was just so they could be there with Cassidy and Miss Sally, but then Noah’s mother was talking one on one with Jocie’s dad before she turned to look out at people still in the pews. Suddenly everybody was silent again.

  “I’m presenting myself and Noah is presenting himself to the church for membership. I believe in the Lord and made a profession of faith when I was ten years old. Noah has also made a profession of faith and been baptized into the church. We’re not doing this as any kind of protest or challenge. If you refuse me and Noah membership, we will understand and not harbor any resentment. But the Lord stirred up my spirit and Noah’s this day.”

  Mrs. Hearndon looked around at Miss Sally and then back at the people. She swiped the tears off her face with the palms of her hands and drew in a deep breath before she was able to go on. “And if you’ll have me, I want to be a member of the same church my mother belongs to.”

  A stillness settled over the church as Jocie’s father stepped forward. He looked a little worried as he said, “And what is the pleasure of the church? Of course, the rededication decisions require no action, but do you accept these other decisions that have been brought before the church? Wesley Green as a candidate for baptism into the full fellowship of our church, Leigh Jacobson as a member on promise of her letter from the Hollyhill First Baptist Church, and Myra Hearndon and Noah Hearndon on statements of faith?”

  Noah’s mother put a hand on Jocie’s father’s arm. Her voice was calm, sure. “No, Rev. Brooke. You can’t do it that way. Each vote needs to be taken individually. Wesley. Leigh. Me. Noah. Separately.”

  Where a few minutes ago there had been movement and joy throughout the church, now it was as if everybody was afraid to breathe. Jocie looked around at the deacons, who were always the ones to make a motion to accept a new member candidate. Matt McDermott was holding up his hand to speak, but Ogden Martin jumped in front of him. Jocie wanted to hide under the pew and not hear what he was going to say. He was always against everything her father proposed.

  But then he was saying, “I move that we accept each of these people, individually and one by one. First Wesley Green. I’m sure Deacon McDermott will second each of my motions.” Mr. Martin looked over at Mr. McDermott, who nodded. “If that is your pleasure, say amen.”

  The amens were loud, unanimous.

  “Leigh Jacobson? Amens again, please.”

  Again the amens rang out all over the church.

  “Myra Hearndon? On her statement of faith. Amens?”

  Without hesitation the amens sounded loud again and then the same for Noah. No sooner had the amens died out than Jim Sanderson was saying, “You wouldn’t want to lead the singing, would you, Mrs. Hearndon?”

  Everybody laughed, and again Jocie wanted to go to the front. Again her feet couldn’t seem to move off their space on the floor. Again the Lord was saying not yet. Saying that maybe there was something she needed to do before she could go share the joy. She looked behind her where Paulette had been sitting on the back pew with Ronnie Martin. They weren’t sitting now. They were sta
nding the way everybody else was, but they were there. And the Lord was prodding Jocie.

  She picked up her feet and moved not toward the front of the church but toward the back. She stopped in front of Ronnie Martin.

  “I forgive you,” she said. “I don’t just pretend to forgive you. I really forgive you.”

  Ronnie didn’t seem to know what to say as he looked at her without smiling. After an uncomfortable minute, he said, “Okay. Good.”

  Then as she started to turn away, he went on. “Wait a minute, Jocie. I want you to know that I really am sorry for what I did and not just because of Paulette. Honest.”

  “I believe you,” Jocie said. And she did. She felt lighter, as though a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, or maybe it was that when she forgave—really forgave—Ronnie, only then did she feel the forgiveness she had needed. She actually thought about reaching out and hugging Ronnie, but then it seemed better to just smile before she rushed down the aisle to hug Wes.

  Jessica Sanderson had to play through “Trust and Obey” twenty times while everybody shook hands with everybody else who had made decisions. And then Bob Jessup was asking for anybody who wanted to help, to follow him to the Hearndon farm to help plant the apple trees that were out in his truck.

  Leigh took Tabitha and little Stephen and Aunt Love home. But Wes stayed and rode down to the Hearndon place with Jocie and her father. Every deacon came and their wives. In all, over twenty people descended on Alex Hearndon, who didn’t look as if he could believe his eyes when Bob Jessup showed him the trees. He stared hard at Mr. Jessup for a long minute, but then Miss Sally was stepping up beside him to say something into his ear, and Noah’s father stuck his hand out and shook Mr. Jessup’s hand.