No Dark Valley
Jamie Langston Turner
© 2004 by Jamie Langston Turner
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-0441-7
The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition as follows:
Parts of chapters one through four first appeared in the short story “Such a Narrow Life” by Jamie L. Turner, Moody magazine, July/August 1991.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover design by Lookout Design Group, Inc.
IN MEMORY OF MY GRANDMOTHERS LEONA HOLLAND THOMAS (1898–1988)
AND
KATE FLEMING LANGSTON (1900–1994)
The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness . . . teachers of good things.
TITUS 2:3
Two of my best teachers about life were my grandmothers. Neither of them had an abundance of this world’s goods, but they were both rich in things of eternal value. One was a preacher’s wife in Mississippi, and the other was married to a barber and storekeeper in Georgia. One taught for a time in a one-room schoolhouse, one was ordained to perform wedding ceremonies, and both knew how to stretch a dollar. They both created beauty with their hands. One of them crocheted and tatted, while the other embroidered pillowcases and made patchwork quilts. Both of them lived through four wars and the Depression, and both knew the sorrow of burying a child. When I think of my grandmothers, I am struck with a deep sense of my “goodly heritage” and with a desire to match my steps to theirs, to radiate their godly contentment, their trust in their Savior, and their service to others. God laid it on my grandmothers’ hearts in the 1940s to send their children, my parents, to Bob Jones College in Cleveland, Tennessee, and twenty-five years later my parents in turn felt a clear call to send me to BJU, where I sat under the teaching of intelligent, refined, Christlike men and women, heard sound Bible-based preaching, and was exposed to a vast array of cultural events in art, drama, and music. It has been my joy to give my life in service to the place that has given me so much.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One
Seek Us When We Go Astray
1. The Birds Hush Their Singing
2. On That Beautiful Shore
3. Where the Still Waters Flow
4. And the Morning Breaks Eternal
5. Marching Through Immanuel’s Ground
6. Where Bright Angel Feet Have Trod
7. Some Melodious Sonnet
8. Each Earthly Joy
9. Silent in the Grave
10. Of Every Good Possessed
11. A Green Hill Far Away
12. With Every Morning Sacrifice
13. Ten Thousand Charms
14. Just Beyond the Shining River
15. Yonder Sacred Throng
16. Not a Shadow, Not a Sigh
17. Frail Children of Dust
18. The Burning of the Noonday Heat
19. On the Page White and Fair
20. Till the Last Beam Fadeth
21. Those Wide, Extended Plains
22. No Other Fount
23. Pilgrim Through This Barren Land
24. Fathomless Billows of Love
Part Two
Hear, O Hear Us When We Pray
25. One Holy Passion
26. Fast Falls the Eventide
27. Emblem of Suffering
28. Music in the Sinner’s Ears
29. Deathbeds Are Coming
30. All His Jewels, Precious Jewels
31. Mount Pisgah’s Lofty Height
32. Where No Tears Will Ever Fall
33. This World of Toil and Snares
34. Out of Distress to Jubilant Psalm
35. And Grace Will Lead Me Home
36. Deeper Than the Mighty Rolling Sea
37. The Song of Harvest-Home
Part Three
Thou Hast Loved Us, Love Us Still
38. Through the Storm, Through the Night
About the Author
Other Books by Author
Back Cover
Part One:
SEEK US
WHEN
WE GO ASTRAY
1
The Birds Hush Their Singing
“We been hopin’ you’d come,” Aunt Beulah called, pushing the door open. She stepped out onto the porch, closing the door, then letting the screen slam behind her. “Come on inside before you freeze to death. Everybody’s here eatin’.” Her words came out in little white puffs. She was wearing a nubby black sweater over a navy blue dress and pink terry-cloth bedroom slippers on her feet.
Celia felt a sudden wave of panic. So that explained all the cars parked up and down the street. Aunt Beulah hadn’t told her that everybody would be here at her house eating. If she had, Celia would never have agreed to come. She had expected only Aunt Beulah and Uncle Taylor to be here, not everybody. “Come on by the house first,” Aunt Beulah had told her over the phone. “We can have us a little visit before we go to the funeral home.”
“Now, tell me again which cow this is,” Al said as they started up the sidewalk. On the drive here Celia had told him the names of her grandmother’s five sisters—Clara, Bess, Beulah, Elsie, and Molly—to which Al had replied, “They sound like cows.” He had then laughed, for what seemed to Celia a little too long, at his joke. He was right about their names, of course, though Celia had never thought of it before. And her grandmother’s name had fit right in with the rest: Sadie.
“This one’s Aunt Beulah,” Celia said. “She’s the only one of them who ever liked me.”
“Watch out for that icy patch there!” Aunt Beulah called. “Molly nearly slipped on it earlier. I got Taylor to sprinkle some salt on it, but it might have refroze.” She shaded her eyes as she watched Celia and Al make their way toward her. “I’m sure glad you could come, Celia. I told them you would.” The implication, clearly, was But nobody believed me.
Aunt Beulah stepped back and opened the door again. Behind her Celia could see a roomful of people, all jammed together with plates of food balanced on their laps. She heard somebody cry out, “Mercy, you’re lettin’ the cold in, Beulah!”
Celia felt her knees go weak as she started up the steps, Al at her elbow. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said to him. “These people are perfectly capable of violence. There’s no telling what they might do.” She could picture herself lying in the middle of Aunt Beulah’s living room, surrounded by all her Georgia kinfolk coming at her with their knives and forks.
“Don’t worry. I’m here,” Al said. “I won’t let them do anything.” He put his hand on her back. Celia knew he was looking forward to meeting her relatives, to see for himself if they were as weird as she had claimed.
“Come on, hon,” Aunt Beulah said, beckoning. “Quick, get in here where it’s warm!”
In that little space of time before she entered Aunt Beulah’s house, Celia tried to imagine how all of this could be translated into the opening of a novel. She often did this wit
h incidents in her life, although she didn’t write fiction herself, in fact didn’t even read much of it anymore. As a freelance editor, however, she had helped two or three novelists, certainly not very good ones, get their manuscripts ready to submit. It was exhausting, really. She had to wade through so much bad writing and then try to be halfway tactful when helping the writers, always a touchy lot, get things shaped up. During such projects she wondered why in the world she did it. Compared to her editing work, her other job at the Trio Gallery seemed like a summer vacation.
But today might not make such a good opening for a novel, she decided as she lifted her foot to step across the threshold. Far too many novels and movies started out with funerals, many of them in the dead of winter on a day like this one. If she were going to make it into fiction, however, she’d start with this speck of time right now, right before walking inside to face them all, with her heart thudding like a hammer inside her chest. She might start with a sentence like Celia sucked in her breath and stepped across the threshold.
The hum of talk stopped as they entered. Celia glanced around at the circle of faces and nodded. She didn’t actually look at the faces, but at the wall slightly above their heads. She could sense that they were all looking her up and down, that she was being weighed in the balances of their narrow minds and found severely wanting.
“See here, I told you she would come,” Aunt Beulah announced, closing the door. Celia could still feel the pocket of cold air they had brought in with them. Aunt Beulah touched her arm. “Y’all remember Celia, of course, and this here’s her fiancé, Al.”
Al nodded and smiled. “Glad to meet you all.”
There were a few halfhearted replies. Mostly there was silence, though.
Fiancé? Celia thought. Where had Aunt Beulah gotten that? Certainly not from her. Celia was tempted to set her straight. “No, he’s not my fiancé,” she wanted to say. “We’re not engaged.” She wondered what they’d all do if she stood right there and told them the whole truth: “We don’t have any intention of getting married. We’ve been keeping our own separate lives and just sleeping together whenever we feel like it.” She wondered which one of them would lunge after her first. She remembered the tall oak tree in the middle of Aunt Beulah’s backyard. That’s probably the one they’d hang her from.
“Look, they didn’t even wear coats,” someone said from the far corner, and Celia saw it was Aunt Elsie. She hadn’t changed a bit over the years. Same frizzy gray hair. Same squinty eyes. “Maybe they taught ’em not to wear coats up North,” Aunt Elsie added. She gave a little scornful snort, then waved a chicken leg around. “Down here folks wear coats when it’s freezing cold outside!” Aunt Elsie brought the chicken leg swiftly to her mouth and bit off a large chunk.
Celia wondered if she should remind them all that she lived in South Carolina, had done so for a good twelve years now. Evidently they were still holding it against her that she had left Georgia, the land of milk and honey, and gone to a college in Delaware all those years ago, where she had studied journalism.
Celia would never forget how horrified they all were when she announced that she was going to Blackrock College in Delaware. They had all had their say about it, coming over to her grandmother’s house one by one to state their disapproval and offer gloomy forecasts of what happened to young people who went off to public universities, especially those in states other than their own. “It’s in Delaware, not hell!” Celia had exploded one day after one of the aunts had left. And her grandmother had looked as if she’d been poked with a high-voltage wire. “Celie, we don’t use that word in this house!” she had said.
“Well, come on out here to the table,” Aunt Beulah said now. “We got more food than we can ever eat. Everybody’s been so nice to help us out.” As she followed Aunt Beulah across the living room and through the wide doorway into the dining room, Celia could feel every pair of eyes on her.
“Pretty little thing, ain’t she?” she heard someone say.
“Pretty is as pretty does,” Aunt Elsie declared.
Behind her, Celia heard another voice she recognized immediately as Aunt Clara’s, apparently addressing the room at large. Aunt Clara’s voice was deep and husky with an authoritarian tone. She had always been the bossy one among the sisters. “Sadie raised her all by herself, you know, after Celia’s mama and daddy passed so sudden—and so young! Poor Sadie, workin’ her fingers to the bone to raise that child, and never a crumb of thanks she got. Sulky and selfish and rebellious. Broke Sadie’s heart over and over with her wild and willful ways.”
Celia glanced up at Al with a look that said, “See, I told you they were all batty.” He raised his eyebrows and emitted a low whistle.
Celia thought she heard someone in the living room make a shushing sound, but Aunt Clara either didn’t hear it or ignored it. Aunt Clara had been hard of hearing years ago, so Celia could only imagine she was even more so now. Knowing Aunt Clara, it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had heard it or not. If she had something to say, nothing could stop her. Celia could still hear her eighteen years ago, could still see her eyes flaming with indignation, her nose wrinkled up as if she smelled something spoiled: “Mark my words, you’re going to send your poor grandmother to an early grave, young lady, if you go up there to that godless state university!” Celia had laughed right out loud. In her mind, her grandmother, sixty-nine at the time, was already ancient.
“See here, there’s plenty!” Aunt Beulah raised her voice a little, perhaps to try to drown out Aunt Clara. “Y’all get you a plate and help yourself, and I’ll go get the tea. I must’ve set it down out in the living room somewhere. Now take your fill—we got more’n enough for now and later, too. And we’re not in any great big rush. We got us a whole hour before we got to be down to the mortuary.”
From the other room Aunt Clara could still be heard. “ . . . and threw away all her training, ever’ last bit of it. Bowed Sadie down with grief to talk about it. Just had to go up North to some heathen college where they teach evolution and use drugs and let the boys and girls live in the same dormitories and fill up their minds with trash and . . .”
The dining room table bore a random assortment of food, all in Corning Ware dishes, Pyrex, tin plates, and plastic containers of every kind. Al caught her eye and winked. He looked as if life had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. This was one of the things that most irritated Celia about Al—his enormous preoccupation with food. At times he could be so intelligent, so witty and sensitive to her moods, knowing exactly how much to say and when to quit prying, understanding her unspoken jokes, but then he’d turn around and act like some kind of animal when he got hungry.
Evidently no thought had been taken to arranging the food in any semblance of categories. It looked as if it had been set down in whatever order it had been delivered, then shoved over to make room for more. At one end sat a big platter of ham, surrounded by a basket of hush puppies, a dish of apple dumplings, and a plate of salmon croquettes. Corn-bread muffins, fruit cocktail, fried chicken, pinto beans, creamed corn, biscuits, custard pie, Jell-O salad—on and on it went.
Typical, thought Celia. It would never occur to these people, her Georgia relatives, to put all the meats together in one place, then the vegetables, salads, and desserts. Just throw them all together in a big hodgepodge and dig in. That was their way, always had been.
That was exactly how they approached life in general—mixed everything together in one big pot, stirred their religion in with whatever they did. Celia remembered how mortified she used to be when her grandmother was in Kmart or Piggly Wiggly, looking for cornstarch or floor wax one minute, then accosting a total stranger in the aisle the next, telling him bluntly that Jesus died to save sinful men or inviting him gruffly to a revival meeting at church. Celia would always walk away and hide out in another aisle.
Looking at the table, Celia couldn’t help thinking how much Grandmother would have enjoyed this occasion, with all the people a
nd all the food. She had loved family gatherings, would always arrive early and leave late, would sample some of every dish on the table, then go home grumbling about how she wished people wouldn’t bring so much food. In her medicine chest Grandmother had a bottle, among all the others, on which she had printed “When you eat too much,” and she would always shake a pill out of it after such a get-together and gulp it down. That was just like Christians, in Celia’s opinion—always looking for easy answers to problems.
And Grandmother had always loved a funeral, too, had dragged Celia to dozens of them all over the county during the years they’d lived together on the other side of this pathetic little excuse of a town. It was too bad a person couldn’t attend his own funeral, Celia thought. Maybe they should have rehearsals for them the way they did for weddings. That way the person could come and see how the service was going to go, then give suggestions for improvements, and after that go ahead and die.
* * *
Celia followed Al around the table, taking small helpings of a few dishes. Al’s plate was heaped before he had made it halfway around, and he looked longingly at the other side of the table. There were two empty folding chairs in the dining room, angled into a corner beside the gas heater. The wallpaper—a design of large red roses twining in and out of a lattice—looked scorched above the heater and was curling apart at the seams. Celia was glad the living room was full. She would have hated to eat in there with all the aunts glaring at her, their small minds racing to think of all the wicked things she must have done since she left her grandmother’s house eighteen years ago.
She thought Aunt Clara was through in the other room, but evidently she had just stopped a few moments to chew. “Sad how some folks’ll wait till a funeral to come back and pay their respects,” Celia heard her say. “Poor Sadie. What she wouldn’t of give for that girl to come see her before she died. You’d sure think a body would have enough common decency to come visit their own grandmother when she was on her deathbed!”
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