Christy

by Catherine Marshall

  She was kneeling now, planting on the bank of the stream—of all things—lady’s-slippers, gorgeous snow-white ones with lips of brilliant pinkish-­purple. As she worked, she was singing softly “The Green Bed”—that haunting ballad of rare loveliness that I had so often heard in the Spencer cabin:

  O come you home, dear Johnny,

  O come you home from sea?

  Last night my daughter Polly

  Was dreaming of thee . . .

  Her hands, those red and work-worn hands, were beautiful now. Soft and white they were. As she burrowed in the dirt and tenderly mounded the earth around each plant, tamping it in firmly, the light danced on her moving fingertips, splintering into diamonds reflected in the water, tossed back into the air, caught in her hair.

  “Fairlight! Oh, Fairlight—I’m almost there. I’m coming. We’ll plant them together. We’ll . . .”

  From a great distance someone was calling my name. The voice was familiar. Whose? . . . I did not want to hear it. The voice was weight pulling me backward, drawing me away from the light. I would ignore it. I had to go on. The decision was made.

  But over and over the voice called my name. No matter how I tried to stop my ears, I could not ignore it. Why? Why could I not go on? There was something in the voice that pulled me back. Now I recognized it—in the voice there was love too, like the love I had seen among the playing children. There was pulling power in that love. But the weight, the awful weight. I did not want that earthbound weight along with it.

  Fairlight still had not seen me. She had finished the planting. The lady’s-­slippers stood up straight with heads erect, as if they had always grown happily in that spot. And then Fairlight and Jeter waded into the stream, splashing, skipping from rock to rock—as she and I had so often rollicked together. The more they splashed, the more the baby lying on her mossy bed kicked her feet and moved her tiny hands and gurgled. I stared longingly, wanting to be there beside them.

  Then I knew. Suddenly I knew and bowed my head with the knowledge. I had to go back. Someone (who was it?) who loved me, still needed me. The light was not for me yet. Not yet. But sometime. Oh, sometime! Fairlight, you will wait for me, won’t you? Won’t you? Fairlight. The weight, the weight. The fading light . . .

  I was heavy, so heavy. My eyelids were leaden. They would not open. The familiar voice, a man’s voice, very soft. He was talking to me, calling me. “Christy, Christy, you’ve got to come back to me. Christy, wherever you are, listen to me . . . Christy, I love you, love you, love you. Christy, can you hear me? Down in your spirit, at the depth of you, do you hear what I’m saying to you? I love you! You cannot leave me without knowing this. Christy—”

  And then the tone of the words changed. “God, I have fought against You because I have not understood. Not only fought, God, but cursed You. I did not understand why You let Margaret die—and our son. I did not understand anything about You. I still don’t understand anything—except that somehow I know You are love. And that in my heart has been born so great a love for Christy as I did not know could exist on this earth. You, God, must be responsible. You must have put it there. So what do I do with it now?” The voice broke. The bedclothes muffled a man’s sobs. I wanted to comfort the man in some way. I tried to lift my hand, but it was too heavy. Still my eyelids would not open.

  The voice was hoarse with emotion. “Lord God Almighty, Lord God of heaven and of earth, I have been stiff-necked and proud, arrogant and stupid. I am not worthy of—of anything, least of all to ask any favors of You.” The voice paused. The room was very quiet. I could hear the sharp intake of the man’s breath. “Lord God, You are the Creator, I am the created. I am helpless, as helpless as all other men. As a doctor, I thought I knew something. Now there is nothing more that I can do for Christy. Nothing at all.

  “So I offer back to you this love you gave. It’s all I have to give You, God. Here are our lives—hers and mine—I hold them out to you. Do—with us—as You please.” The voice fell silent.

  So his was the voice that had called me back. Dr. MacNeill’s. He needed me. He loved me. He loved me like that. There was a warm glow in the room. Warmth came into me, starting at the top of my head and flowing steadily downward, into my brain, into my face—my eyelids fluttered open. Familiar objects in the room came into focus. He was still there beside my bed, his head sunk on the covers, one hand stretched out with the bowl of that old pipe of his clutched in it, but the stem of the pipe was broken. It had fallen from his hand and lay on the rumpled covers of the bed.

  And still the strength and the warmth flowed—into my chest, along my arms. I could move my fingers now.

  I felt across the counterpane until my hand reached his, the big hand with the blond-red hairs on top. My fingers closed over his hand and gripped it. His head came up.

  “Christy!”

  The joy of the children was in his voice.