Saints Among Us

by Anne Marie Rodgers

Just then, a single sharp yip sounded behind her. Alice turned around. Her little friend from her first night of intake, the black-and-white cocker spaniel, was on her feet, nose pushed as far as possible through the openings of her kennel. Her entire posture shouted, “Hey! What about me?”

  “Did you think I forgot you? You’re still my favorite girl.” Alice walked over and knelt before the kennel. “I’m going to feed you and take you out for a walk in a little while.”

  The little dog stood on its hind legs against the bars. In that position, Alice could see the ugly tumor that marred its soft underbelly. She prayed every evening that the tumor was benign and that the cocker would have plenty of years left. But Mark had not been any more optimistic than Dr. Spade had in his assessment of the tumor, and Alice feared the worst.

  Louise held the first rehearsal for the Santa Lucia celebration the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving. Rev. Thompson had announced it from the pulpit for the previous two Sundays, and Louise also had placed the notice in the bulletin about it last week.

  She looked on anxiously as the chapel began to fill with children at seven, the designated time for the group to gather. If no one came, the Lindars family might not feel very welcome at Grace Chapel. Louise thought the Santa Lucia celebration would be a lovely addition to the church’s Advent preparations and hoped others would feel the same way.

  Not long after seven, Louise began to see that her fears were groundless. First to arrive were the Lindars: Karin and her three youngest children, Marit, Niklas and Mattias. They had not even removed their coats when Charles and Sissy Matthews, two of Louise’s piano students, arrived. A steady procession of children followed: Many of Alice’s ANGELs came, including Kate Waller, who brought her seven-year-old sister Abby; and Sarah Roberts, looking totally disgusted as her younger brother Eason came in making lots of noise. Louise put a quick stop to Eason’s outbursts.

  Briana and Tiffany Sherman arrived next, followed immediately by the two youngest Dawson boys and another brother and sister from the congregation. Louise and Karin both winced as the rowdy Trimble brothers, both in fourth grade, burst through the door.

  As she surveyed the group of participants, Louise took a deep breath. That block of eight- and nine-year-old boys bore close watching, but she was delighted that nearly two dozen of the chapel’s children had turned out for this. There was a paucity of older boys, whose mothers probably hadn’t been able to bribe, threaten or force them to attend, so the older group consisted of the ANGELs and a few other girls.

  As the children took seats in the pews, Louise offered a simple explanation of Saint Lucy’s good works, Swedish customs that Karin had told her about and the theme of light they would use in their service.

  “All right, then, boys and girls. We’ll start with the song we all will sing together. Almost all of the songs we will learn are titled ‘Santa Lucia,’ so I shall refer to this one by its first line: ‘Hark! Through the darksome night.’”

  “Darksome’s not a word,” chortled one of the Trimble boys.

  “It most certainly is, young man.” Louise’s voice brooked no argument. “These songs were written many years ago when people often spoke and wrote differently than we do today.”

  The Trimble child became silent, and Louise sat down at the piano to begin the introduction as the vocal rehearsal went on. After twenty minutes, Louise felt satisfied with their progress. The children had made a good start on “Hark! Through the Darksome Night,” and “Santa Lucia, Thy Light Is Glowing,” a simpler tune that could be sung in a round. She had made copies of the songs for each child to take home, and she intended to pass these out at the end of the rehearsal.

  After a short break, Karin lined up the children in order of height. Louise had worried a bit about how to deal with the fact that this whole ceremony was created so that Marit Lindars could be a Lucia. Fortunately, Marit was the tallest of the gaggle of young girls, so it made perfect sense that she would wear the crown this year. And since no one had seen a Santa Lucia program before, the other girls all seemed thrilled to be handmaidens.

  Louise figured that if this became an annual tradition, she would hereafter let Rev. Thompson deal with what was sure to become a thorny issue of choosing a Lucia.

  Camp Compassion was quiet without the customary complement of volunteers. Wednesday evening, Alice, June, Ellen and the twins were sitting around a small campfire they had made when the evening’s work was done. Providing care had been difficult with so few people, and everyone handled at least half a dozen animals. Coming at the end of the day’s toil, the final hours were exhausting.

  “I have to make one more trip over to the CCU,” Alice said, “and then I’m turning in. The next couple of days are going to be challenging.”

  “You can say that again.” Miranda flopped down in a camp chair and fanned herself dramatically. “We’re going to be working twice as hard as we did before.”

  “Based on the premise that there are only half as many of us left?” Her brother grabbed the back of the chair and pretended to tip her over.

  “Royce!” Miranda’s arms and legs flailed. Fortunately, her twin was only teasing, and he steadied the chair with both hands, returning all four legs to the ground as she clutched at his arms.

  “Those two.” Ellen shook her head fondly. “Sometimes I’m not sure if they’re seventeen or seven,” she said to Alice.

  The camping area was oddly quiet. Alice had been used to hearing the murmur of low conversations, the metallic sounds of cooking over camp stoves and even the snores of their louder neighbors.

  Now, the two little tents looked like an oasis in the middle of a desert. There were a few other tents still dotting the field, and the RV was still there. Mark’s mobile clinic was parked near the house, and Alice knew he had been sleeping there, as had Edmund, while Gina bunked with one of the other women.

  “I may have to break down and take a shower in the morning,” June said. “Do you think we can manage to rig that shower up long enough to take turns?”

  “We can hold the darn thing up if we have to,” Ellen said. “I think a shower is an excellent idea.” The shower enclosure had proven impossible to keep in place, and after two campers suffered embarrassment at the mercy of the unpredictable frame, attempts at showers were abandoned. But now that there were so few people about, cleaning up seemed less risky.

  “I think we could do it if two of us hold the curtain in place while the third showers.”

  “Oh, that would be heavenly.” June hugged herself. “My daughter didn’t believe me when I said I hadn’t had a shower in a week.”

  “Sponge baths and baby wipes can only help so much,” Ellen muttered.

  Alice laughed. “I’ve got snarls in my hair that may never come out.”

  “Peanut butter works,” offered Miranda.

  All three women turned and looked at her.

  “Peanut butter?” echoed her mother.

  “Yeah. You work it into the knotted part and just gently start teasing pieces lose. It worked wonders when I got a barrette caught in my hair in eighth grade.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this?” Ellen said to the sky.

  “Because Faith and I were fooling around, and I was afraid you’d get mad. It worked, so no problem, right?”

  “I think I’ll pass on the peanut-butter solution.” Alice indicated her practical, chin-length hairstyle. “This doesn’t require anything quite that drastic.”

  She rose from her chair and slipped off the rubber sandals she had been wearing around the tent area. Jamming her feet into her still-tied sneakers, she said, “I’ll be back in a little while. I want to see if I can get that poor shepherd to eat a little more.”

  “I’ll walk you over,” Royce offered. “It’s easy to trip over that rough ground in the dark.” He rose, picking up a wide-beamed flashlight.

  “Thank you.” Alice was grateful for the young man’s thoughtful concern. Walking through a bumpy field at night was chall
enging, and she appreciated the company.

  Without further delay, she and Royce headed for the house. After he saw her to the door, he walked down the lane to visit with Kyle, the security man, for a few moments.

  Alice stepped into the dim light of the CCU after she mixed up a bowl of the soft food she wanted to give the shepherd. All the dogs were quiet. The ones who had been there for a while were either too sick to notice her or too content in their safe environment to bark, and three new patients still were disoriented and subdued from their ordeal. Very few were in the same condition that they had been in when she arrived more than a week earlier. Rescue groups and departing volunteers made a daily dent in the number of animals at the camp, but each evening at intake, those numbers swelled again.

  “Hey, my big boy.” Alice gently stroked the dog’s head as she set down the bowl. This evening, the shepherd lifted his head and looked alert, his ears up, providing an inquisitive appearance. “I brought you a snack to hold you through the night. Eat up.” Mark had warned her not to feed the dog large amounts at a time because its stomach had been empty for so long. Since her midafternoon victory, Alice had fed the dog two more small amounts of food.

  The shepherd immediately started licking at the bowl of food. Alice backed away, happy to see the dog eating so well on his own.

  A whining sound behind her made her smile. “You can’t stand it when I pay attention to someone else, can you?” she asked the cocker spaniel. Its pink tongue hung out. The small black-and-white dog had been there the longest, Alice was sure. Several times, Alice had seen rescue groups ready to take her until they saw the tumor. One woman even intended to take her despite it—until the little dog growled at the lady.

  Alice opened the kennel door and sat down on the floor, and the cocker jumped into her lap as if she’d been doing it for years. “You’re someone’s pet. Somebody loved you.” She stroked the dog’s ears and scratched her neck, chuckling when the dog immediately rolled onto her back. Alice rubbed the smooth belly, keeping her hands well away from the tumor.

  A quiet voice behind her nearly made her jump. “She loves that, doesn’t she?”

  Mark. Alice relaxed as he lowered himself to the floor beside her, propping his back against the wall. “She seems to. I keep thinking someone must have loved her. She’s obviously used to being cuddled.” She indicated the dog now settling down on her lap.

  “Sure seems like it.” Mark reached over to fondle the cocker’s ears but quickly withdrew his hand when the little dog curled her lip and uttered a warning growl.

  “Stop that! He’s your friend. And mine.”

  “Yours, certainly, but I’m not sure how many of the rest of us she likes,” he said, and she heard a hint of laughter in his tone. “What’s she going to do when you leave?”

  Alice had already begun to worry about that very thing. “I don’t know. I keep hoping her owners will come for her.” Several times during the week, people seeking their pets had walked through the camp. On two occasions, there had been joyous reunions. But far more often, tears had flowed as hopes were dashed yet again. “Mark?”

  “Yes?” He was watching the German shepherd still licking at its food.

  “Will this tumor metastasize?”

  He frowned. “There is no way to know without a biopsy. But I have to tell you, Alice, it has the classic look of a slow-growing malignancy.” He glanced down at the dog, lying contentedly on her back in Alice’s lap. “Look at her. She was somebody’s baby. An indoor pet, from the look of her coat.”

  “How could they have let that tumor go?” Outrage quivered in her voice. She couldn’t stand the thought of a helpless animal suffering. It had no way to explain its pain. It depended on people to care for it and to love it.

  “Perhaps her owners had no choice. Parts of this area are very economically depressed. People with no money can love their pets just as dearly as the local millionaire but be unable to afford veterinary care.” He indicated the kennels. “You saw how many of them haven’t been spayed or neutered. And I suspect that when they’re examined, a number of them will have Lyme disease or be heartworm positive.”

  “Goodness. Thanks, Dr. Graves, for that positive assessment.”

  He smiled, tipping his head back to rest it against the wall. “Sorry. I know you too well to sugarcoat anything. You’d realize I was lying in a heartbeat.”

  Alice was silent. The moment felt oddly intimate, sitting together in the dim light of the small room, speaking in hushed tones. Could her life have been full of this kind of sharing if she had married Mark? She might have a grandchild in her lap instead of a rescued animal.

  “Alice?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you ever wish…that you’d done things differently?”

  She smiled. “I was just thinking about that. You do know me well.” She took a deep breath, understanding what he was asking. Did she regret not deepening their relationship all those years ago? “Sometimes I wonder about it. My life has been satisfying. Happy, for the most part. I know people wonder how I could have been content as a spinster living with my elderly father. But they weren’t on the inside. Our lives were busy and fulfilling. Father, with my help, made a positive difference in so many lives for many years. Do I wish I’d done things differently? No, I don’t believe so. But I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t wonder what the path not taken might have led to.”

  “I wonder sometimes too.” His voice was low. “But now I believe our lives have been just as they were meant to be. Each of us has a purpose, as we discussed the other day in our Bible study.”

  There was a comfortable silence between them.

  “You know I’ve spoken of retiring, of perhaps working part-time in a small companion-animal practice.”

  “From treating elephants to being a small-town vet. Quite a change.”

  He chuckled quietly. After a pause, he said, “I suppose what I would like to know is if you…have you ever considered whether I might be a part of your future?”

  They were silent again. Alice continued to stroke the cocker spaniel. Finally, she said, “You have always held a special place in my heart. You know that. Right now I feel committed to making Grace Chapel Inn a success with Louise and Jane.” She took a deep breath. “If you ever retire—which I will believe when I see a letter to that effect’I would be interested in spending more time with you.”

  Mark did not say anything.

  “I wish I could give you a more definitive answer,” she said, unable to read his silence. “But I can’t decide in advance how I might feel about something that may or may not ever happen.”

  “I understand. Perhaps there will be time for another conversation like this in our future.” He reached over and lightly covered her free hand with his. The cocker spaniel growled, and he chuckled as he released Alice. “I feel as if I have a chaperone.” He got to his feet and stood looking down at her for a long moment.

  “Mark?”

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever the future holds, I hope you know how much I treasure your friendship.”

  “And I yours. Good night, Alice.”

  “Good night, Mark.”

  She put away the cocker spaniel and removed the empty food bowl from the shepherd’s kennel, praising the dog for eating. She was greatly encouraged by that.

  Royce was just returning when she stepped outside. Gratefully, she accepted his company on the walk back to their campsite, all the while mentally replaying Mark’s words.

  Her prayers that night included wellness for the shepherd as well as for guidance in her relationship with Mark Graves.

  Chapter Twelve

  T hanksgiving Day began much like any other at Camp Compassion except that there were fewer hands to tackle the work. The group had decided to have a meal together midafternoon, after the lunch chores and before all the animals required evening feeding and attention.

  Alice was cleaning kennels midmorning when she heard shouting and commotion
outside. Instinct had her rising to her feet and rushing to the door. As she did, two people came toward her supporting a third between them. The person appeared to be cradling one hand with the other, and his shirt was smeared with blood.

  “What happened?” She already was pulling on rubber gloves from one of the boxes Joe had insisted be kept all over the camp.

  “Dog bite.”

  Dear heaven. It was one of the things they all feared most.

  One of the volunteers said, “Those doggone pit bulls’”

  “Had nothing to do with this.” Corinne sent the speaker a glare. “It was a Labrador retriever.”

  “Sit him down here, and someone stay close in case he passes out.”

  “Blood doesn’t bother me,” the young man said. He grimaced. “But bite marks do.” Alice had to search her memory for a moment, but finally his name came to her.

  “Foster, right? You’ve been working with Corinne on the bigger dogs.”

  He nodded.

  Alice knelt in front of him. “All right, let me take a look at that hand, Foster.”

  The young man took a deep breath and extended his hand.

  The dog had gotten a real hold on him, leaving open wounds on both the front and the back of his hand. At her request he wiggled his fingers and thumb, holding back a cry of pain as he did so.

  “Excellent,” Alice said. “Your fingers are okay, and it looks like everything works.” Gently she used a gauze pad to wipe the blood away. The wounds were not as deep as they could have been, and she did not think the dog’s teeth had nicked any vital blood vessels. Still, the bleeding needed to be halted.

  She stacked several gauze pads together and laid them over the wounds. “I’m going to put pressure on this for a minute,” she warned him.

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  Kyle was one of the people who had brought him in, and the beefy security guard extended a hand to Foster. “Here,” he said. “Squeeze if you need to.”

  “Thanks, man.” Foster bit his lip and screwed up his face as Alice began to press on the wound.