As Lambs to His Fold

by Kurt F. Kammeyer

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Lord Is My Light....

  I was at peace now, concerning the fate of our rabbit friends. But nothing had resolved my dilemma concerning Miss Biggs’s African violet. There was my dollar in the Welcome Bank. I could give her that with an apology for my carelessness; but even a whole dollar didn’t seem to me to be enough for Miss Biggs. She had trusted me, and I had failed her.

  I did extra chores to earn more money. I pulled up weeds in the vegetable garden and received a nickel from Mamma. I picked beetles off Grandma’s roses. For that, she gave me a whole dime.

  I put the money in a jar on my dresser.

  But, still, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was. I saved my allowance, dime by dime. I quit buying candy and going to movies.

  Leatrice, bless her, gave me looks of pity and shared her candy with me.

  __________

  It was mid-August. Before we knew it, autumn would be leaving her calling cards of gold and crimson across Welcome Valley. Mamma was canning applesauce, the moist, sweet fragrance drifting through the kitchen window. She asked Leatrice and me if we would go up on the east bench above Welcome Valley and see if the chokecherries were ripe. She liked to add the dark, tart juice to her apple jelly.

  We cut across Brother Swayze’s potato field and then climbed a steep path up to the east bench, where we could look out over the town and see the spire of the tabernacle above the trees.

  Out in Welcome Valley the row of poplars that in the spring had resembled dark exclamation points against the sky would presently become golden candle flames lighting the way to winter. Where we stood, the wind had blown a fine covering of dust over bushes and berries. A veil of smoke in the air showed where weeds were being burned along ditch banks. In the foothills, quaking aspens would soon be working their golden magic. Summer would be turning her last, colorful pages.

  Before picking the chokecherries, we went over to look at the old house, abandoned years before by homesteaders who had found that the east bench was not profitable for farming. It stood with rock walls sagging, mortar gone from between the stones, windows broken — sightless and seared by sun and wind.

  The floor planking had split, weeds grew up through the cracks. Still, we liked to play in the four empty rooms, darting in and out, hiding in dusty corners, jumping out to say, “Boo!”

  Today, we decided to play our favorite game: rich people living in Paris, France.

  “We need names,” announced Leatrice. “I’ll be Missus Rich-Rich, an’ you,” she bent over in a burst of giggles,” can be Missus Snooty-Tooty.”

  I didn’t want to be Missus Snooty-Tooty.

  I searched for another name. “I’ll be Missus Lovely.”

  In fancy, we donned elegant, low-cut, backless gowns, sprayed ourselves with tons of perfume, hung diamonds in our ears, pearls around our throats, and rubies and emeralds on our fingers and wrists. We stepped into a long, swooshy limousine, ordered our invisible chauffeur, “To the ball, James.” We pranced in sparkly, high-heeled shoes up to the door of a really swell mansion, where a butler opened the door for us. And then Missus Rich-Rich and Missus Lovely sailed into a really gorgeous ballroom a mile long and danced with handsome men in top hats and evening clothes.

  Then, for some reason I couldn’t explain, I quite suddenly didn’t want to play any more. Perhaps the feeling was caused by the sun going behind a cloud and leaving the old house in shadow; or, maybe, it was because of the wind whistling sadly through the broken windows. Perhaps it was premonition. I felt inexplicably sad.

  “Let’s pick the chokecherries an’ go home.”

  The fruit clustering on the bushes was dark red, blood red; our hands took on the same hue as we picked. I licked a stained finger. The juice was bittersweet.

  We arrived home to find our parents anxiously waiting for us. Brother Nickelbee had suffered a stroke and had been taken to the hospital in Prosperity. The ladies from the Relief Society, going to visit him, had found him stretched out on his kitchen floor in a puddle of milk and broken glass.

  The nurse at the desk asked if we were relatives. Daddy said, “We’re the closest thing he has to a family.”

  She looked at Leatrice and me and shook her head.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let these girls go up. They’re too young.”

  Uncle Roland put his hands on our shoulders and marched us up to the desk.

  “These girls are his very best friends.” Uncle Roland, although he tried hard to cover it, was a very soft-hearted man. And so we were allowed to go up to the second floor and down a long corridor to a room where Brother Nickelbee, looking shrunken and very old, lay in a white bed. His beautiful beard had been shaved off, and the right side of his face was pulled down like wax that has melted. He had a patch over his right eye.

  I looked at Daddy questioningly, and he whispered, “The stroke has affected his eye so he can’t close it. That’s why the patch is there.”

  But, in mind and heart, he was still the Brother Nickelbee we knew. He smiled when he saw us and stretched out his undamaged, left hand. I saw that they had taken his decoder ring away. He was very pleased to see us. He could only speak from one side of his mouth, but he whispered as though ushering us graciously into his home, “Brothers, sisters, it’s mighty good o’ yuh ta come.”

  Then, as though friendship granted us certain powers of persuasion, his face took on a pleading look and he was begging us, “Would yuh please ask ‘em ta let me go home?” The nurse, her starched uniform a-crackle, entered as Brother Nickelbee was making this plea. It wasn’t the first time he had done so, apparently, for she answered matter-of-factly, “The best place for you is right here in the hospital.”

  Looking tired and defeated, he sank into the pillow.

  Sensing how much it meant to him, I said, “I’ll take care of you, Brother Nickelbee.”

  Leatrice chimed in, “Me, too.”

  The nurse shook her head very negatively. “You girls are too young. He needs the kind of care we can give him here. If we let him go home, there would have to be someone skilled in nursing to look after him.”

  Mamma and Aunt Mabel exchanged glances.

  “Perhaps we could take turns,” Mamma murmured.

  “No,” said the nurse, the skirt of her uniform crackling authoritatively as she turned to leave. “It’s impossible. Doctor wouldn’t allow it.”

  As she marched toward the door, she almost collided with someone coming in carrying a large vase of flowers. Sister Posey. The Sister Posey who loved flowers but hated kids, who shook her rake, and shouted at us.

  What was she doing here? I felt a surge of resentment. This was our Brother Nickelbee. Why was she butting in?

  She strode purposefully to the bedside table and set the vase of flowers down with a thump.

  She must have heard the last part of the conversation, for she turned and said flatly, “I’ll take care of him.”

  The nurse asked doubtfully, “Do you have any training?”

  “Red Cross nurse during the war.”

  “He’d need someone there all the time.”

  “I’d sleep on the couch. Got no one at home but myself.”

  There was a discussion with Doctor/Bishop Lindblum, and it was settled. Brother Nickelbee would have his desire granted. He would go home. Mamma said to Sister Posey, “It’s very kind of you to do this.”

  “Kind!” she snorted. “Nothing of the sort. I’d do anything for John Nickelbee. Know what he did when I broke my leg, oh, about five years ago? Couldn’t get out to tend my yard; so that blessed old man came over regularly to weed and water so things wouldn’t die.”

  So Brother Nickelbee went home; and Sister Posey moved in to cook, and clean, and care for him.