Miriam and Ellis and Ralph and Sandy stood.
The doctor looked at them, confused. “Amanda’s parents can go see her,” he said. “But just her parents. We don’t want a lot of people back there. We’re still working on her.”
Ellis stepped forward, but Miriam pulled him back. “Honey, we’re not her parents. That’s Ralph and Sandy. Let them go be with her.”
Ellis began to weep, standing in the center of the room, his body limp with misery.
Ralph placed his hand on Ellis’s shoulder. “You go on ahead. You’ve been better parents to her than we ever were. Sandy and I, we can wait.”
Miriam and Sandy stood watching their husbands. Ralph hung his head, the burden of his failures weighing especially heavy in this moment of confession. As for Ellis, he’d never been so thoroughly ashamed. The events of the past year ran through his head like a fast-forwarded movie—his cold rebuff of his brother, his hard words, his rigid refusal to believe anything good about his brother. My Lord, he thought, I hit my own brother, my own flesh and blood, and all he wanted was forgiveness. Ellis was glad his parents weren’t alive to know the depths to which he had fallen.
The hateful weight that had burdened Ellis Hodge for years lifted from him and he turned to his little brother, crying, drawing Ralph toward him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Sorry I hit you. Sorry I was so mean to you.”
Ralph held him, patting his back. “Don’t you worry about any of that.”
The two men stood, hugging one another, not speaking, just thumping one another on the back and healing their break.
“Why not both of you go in there and Sandy and I will wait out here,” Miriam said after a bit. “It’ll be good medicine for Amanda to see you two together.”
“Let’s go, brother. Let’s go see your little girl,” Ellis said, walking toward the door, his arm linked with Ralph’s.
Sam watched on from his chair, dazed by this grace. Being a pastor at Harmony Friends Meeting didn’t allow for many opportunities to witness reconciliation, and he stored the event away in his memory for a future sermon illustration. Of course, he’d have to change the names and wait until the Hodges died, but it bore remembering just the same.
They allowed Ralph and Ellis to stay for five minutes before shooing them out so Miriam and Sandy could see her. Amanda’s head was swaddled in bandages, her lovely hair shorn off. An IV needle was taped to her arm. A nurse stood beside her, peering at the machines blinking by her bedside. Amanda’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow.
“We’ve got her pretty doped up,” the nurse explained. “She needs rest. She took a real knock to the head. We’re afraid her brain might swell, so we’re keeping a close watch on her.”
“How can you fix that?” Miriam asked.
“With drugs mostly. But if it gets bad, we might have to remove a portion of her skull,” the nurse explained, taking Miriam by the hand. “I know it sounds terrible, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
Miriam felt like vomiting and had to fight back a rise of bile.
“Is she going to make it?” Sandy asked, steeling herself for the answer.
“We’re doing everything we can,” the nurse promised. “It all depends on how her brain responds and whether she’s bleeding internally. We’re going to run a CAT scan in just a little while. We’ll know a lot more after that. Now why don’t you all go get something to eat, and if we need you, we can page you at the cafeteria.”
So they went, all the Hodges and Sam, and pushed food around their plates for half an hour before trudging back upstairs to sit in the waiting room.
Around eight, Sam phoned home to hear his son’s voices, thanking God they weren’t lying in a hospital bed with holes in their heads. Barbara told him a group had gathered at the Hinshaws’ home to pray. “It was Dale’s idea. He said, and I quote, ‘With folks in the meeting dropping like flies, we need to get right with the Lord before he takes us all out.’”
“Well, bless his heart,” Sam said. “But shouldn’t he be resting? He’s had a long day too.”
“The boys and I stopped past there and he looked fine to me. He was propped up on the couch, telling everyone else what to do. I guess the doctor did tell him he needed to stay off his feet a couple weeks. Besides, you know Dale. Having a cause perks him up.”
Sam chuckled.
“Kind of makes you glad you gave him CPR, doesn’t it?
“He does have his good side,” Sam said. He paused for a moment. “You know, it feels weird saying it, but I’m actually growing fond of Dale. He’s not all that bad a guy, really.”
“He sure comes through in a pinch.”
“That he does,” Sam agreed.
“Miss you, honey.”
“I miss you too,” Sam said wistfully.
“When will you be home?”
“Just as soon as we know she’ll be all right. But don’t count on me tonight. Probably tomorrow morning some time. Can you call Frank and tell him I won’t be at the office?”
“Will do. Be sure to tell the Hodges we’re thinking of them.”
He hung up, glad he could be present for the Hodges, but wishing he were home with his boys, ending the day with a game of checkers at their kitchen table. Wishing Amanda Hodge had driven through the intersection ten seconds later. Wishing, wishing, wishing.
The nurses brought them blankets, and they fashioned pallets across the chairs and settled in for a night of fitful sleep. They stirred around five the next morning and went immediately to Amanda’s room, where the night nurse greeted them with mixed news. “She doesn’t appear to be bleeding internally, but there’s still swelling in her brain. We’re trying a new drug to see if it helps.”
They retreated to the cafeteria for breakfast, where Ellis and Ralph sat side by side revisiting the misdeeds of their youth in an effort to distract themselves.
“Say, Ralph, remember that time Dad went out of town on that big fishing trip with Abraham Peacock and told us to paint the barn?” Ellis mimicked their father’s deep voice. “Now boys, I want you to paint the whole barn, from top to bottom, and I want it done by the time I get home.”
“So we painted the windows too,” Ralph said with a snort.
Miriam and Sandy had heard this story a hundred times, but laughed again, enjoying their husbands’ camaraderie.
“How about that trip you and Dad and me took to Colorado?” Ellis said. “Remember that?”
“I never went on that one,” Ralph corrected him. “That was just you and Dad. I asked to go, but Dad said no. Said someone had to stay home to finish the haying.”
Ellis felt a pang of guilt.
“Can’t tell you how many times I wished he’d have let me go. I started drinking that week. Oh well, water under the bridge.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellis said, reaching over to place his hand on Ralph’s knee. The brothers sat quietly, each of them wishing they could undo certain decisions.
Sandy interrupted their musings. “Why not let’s get some breakfast? I’m a little hungry.”
“You do that,” Sam said. “But I need to go home.” He promised to return the next day. Then he remembered Ellis and Miriam were without a car. “How will you get home?”
“They can ride with us,” Sandy said.
“Thank you, honey,” Miriam said, reaching over to hug her sister-in-law.
“Well, then, I guess I’ll be going. You all take care and I’ll be in touch.”
With most of the traffic heading into the city and Sam heading out, he reached the outskirts quickly, then turned onto the highway to Harmony. For a February day, it was pleasant, and feeling the sun on his face lifted his spirits. He found himself praying for Amanda one moment and the next moment thanking God for Ellis and Ralph’s cease-fire. Who would have thought it?
Growing up in a small town, Sam could name family after family riven by discord. Brothers and sisters who went to the grave carrying their bitter animosities. People who went to church faith
fully and taught Sunday school lessons about mercy and pardon and then would boycott the family Thanksgiving. So to see Ellis and Ralph make their peace was a balm to him.
He stopped past the meetinghouse before going home and told Frank all that had happened, then went home and kissed his wife, who made him shower and go to bed, where she lay down too, snuggling alongside him.
“Glad you’re home.”
“It’s nice to be home,” Sam said, staring at the ceiling. They talked about Ellis’s change of heart, then about Amanda, and Barbara began to weep quietly, thinking of her.
Sam drew her closer and kissed her forehead. “She’s gonna be all right. She’s a fighter.”
“Our sons are never driving,” Barbara declared.
“It does make a person regret the invention of the automobile,” Sam agreed. “We were probably better off riding horses.”
Then Sam fell asleep, while Barbara watched him, feeling his breath rise and fall against her. She loved the smell of him. Soap, shaving cream, and the cheap shampoo they bought by the gallon from Kivett’s Five and Dime that had a fruity smell and caused flies to dive-bomb their heads in the summertime.
After a half hour, she slipped out of bed to make lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. Sam’s favorite. Lunch for the conquering hero, her pastor, who moaned incessantly about his job, but deep down loved what he did. He would never admit to it, but after fifteen years of marriage, she knew. Could read him like a book.
After Sam awoke they ate lunch, then took the phone off the hook and went back upstairs to do what husbands and wives sometimes do when their children aren’t home, especially when they’ve been reminded of the fragility of life—how vapor-like it is, here one moment and gone the next.
Twenty-Three
Love Is in the Air
Amanda Hodge remained in the hospital a little over a month—thirty-two days, nineteen hours, and six minutes, to be precise—according to Ellis Hodge, who spent much of that time beside her bed with Miriam and Ralph and Sandy. Asa Peacock fed Ellis’s livestock, and Harmony Friends Meeting gave Miriam a vacation from serving as an elder, in hopes she wouldn’t quit that post altogether.
Sam drove to the hospital twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, to check on her progress. Although she’d sustained a serious head injury and no longer knew the words polyribonucleotide or hermeneutics, which she had once spelled to win the National Spelling Bee, she was still hands down smarter than anyone else in Harmony.
Her first week home, she slept on the couch, where Ellis and Miriam could keep a close eye on her. A steady stream of Harmonians stopped by to visit, including Bob Miles, who snapped her picture and ran it on the front page along with the story of her stunning recovery. Her classmates from high school gathered in the Hodges’ front yard bearing a large sign wishing her well, accompanied by the school’s show choir, who sang several songs to buoy her spirits and speed her recovery.
The Friendly Women’s Circle took turns bringing in meals—a variety of casseroles, roasts, and homemade pies. Ellis gained ten pounds the first week they were home, and Miriam bumped up a dress size.
With Dale Hinshaw on bed rest and Miriam sidelined, the elders skipped two of their monthly meetings, and Sam was blessedly free to do what needed to be done without six people second-guessing him. He got more work done in two months than he had the previous five years. He changed the bulletin cover, fine-tuned the order of worship, cut out the children’s sermon, and ordered new hymnals to replace the ones Moses had carried over from Egypt.
In late April, with Easter a scant two weeks away, he informed the congregation they wouldn’t be holding their annual Easter pageant, that if they wanted all the hullabaloo they could worship at Pastor Jimmy’s church that Sunday, where, in a reenactment of the Resurrection, Clevis Nagle would ascend to the heavens through the clever employment of pulleys and cables.
Not one person complained. They were tired too.
“Good call, Sam,” Fern Hampton said while shaking his hand after worship. “We’ve had enough resurrections around this place. They’re starting to wear me out.”
“We’re not doing anything special for Easter?” his wife asked on their walk home from church.
“Yes, of course, we’re doing something special. We’re going to gather with our friends and worship. You know, the old-time Quakers didn’t go in for all these bells and whistles, and I think they might have had a point. Simplify, that’s what I say.”
“But what about the boys? Didn’t you want to see them in the Easter pageant?”
Sam turned to his sons. “You boys want to dress up in flower costumes and be laughed at?”
“Not me,” said Addison.
“Me neither,” said Levi.
“That solves that,” Sam declared. “Besides, I don’t have time to head it up this year, which means it would have fallen to you.”
“Why don’t we simplify this year?” Barbara suggested.
“Sounds good.”
And though Easter at Harmony Friends that year was simple, it was also beautiful, as a still lake surrounded by pine trees exudes a certain charm. God, in His infinite mercy, caused the organ to malfunction the week before Easter. Judy Iverson hauled her harp to the meetinghouse and when she began to play, everyone in the meeting room closed their eyes and dreamed they were in heaven. It was that good.
Consistent with the theme of resurrection, Amanda Hodge made her first appearance at church since her accident. When she walked in the door, people stood and clapped. It took the Hodges ten minutes to reach their pew for everyone wanting a hug. Ralph and Sandy and Ellis and Miriam walked beside her, beaming all the while, then took their seats in the Hodge pew, fourth one from the front, right-hand side, where the Hodges had planted their cabooses for five generations. Ellis reached his arm around Ralph and squeezed his shoulder. Ralph patted him on the knee. Amanda looked on, glowing.
There are certain times in church when a sermon is pointless, when words don’t need to be spoken because the lesson has already been imparted. That Sunday was such a day. Sam opened his Bible, read the story of the Resurrection, and then had the good sense to sit down. The silence covered them like an old and comfortable blanket, draping in all the right places.
Dale Hinshaw stood and thanked everyone for their prayers. He was feeling much better, thank you. Then he sat down, just like that. No pontificating, no dire warnings that their souls were in jeopardy, no admonitions to straighten up and fly right.
Then Amanda stood and, reading from a list in her hand, expressed her gratitude for everyone who’d done anything for her—the ladies of the Circle for the food, Sam for visiting her in the hospital, Asa for feeding their livestock, Frank for organizing the chain of prayer, the Odd Fellows Lodge for their bouquet, her doctors and nurses at the hospital, and last, but certainly not least, God.
“Amen to that,” Dale said from the seventh row.
They settled back into silence. Several minutes passed with the only sound the hollow tick of the Frieda Hampton Memorial Clock. Then a shoe scraped across the floor and the pew creaked as Ellis Hodge hauled himself to his feet, where he stood quietly for a moment before speaking.
“Sometimes we make our minds up about people and think we have them all figured out, then they go and do something and it changes our minds toward them. But then other times folks change and we don’t believe it, and it causes a lot of hurt. And well, I guess what I want to say is that some people change, and we need to be grateful for that and reach out to them while we still can.”
Miriam looked up at him, dabbing her eyes. Ralph bowed his head. Ellis reached down and placed his hand on Ralph’s shoulder, then went on. “If any of you have anything against a family member or a friend, you need to forgive them or it’ll eat you up inside.”
His piece said, he sat down.
When they took the offering there were no bills less than a five in the plate. And when they stood to sing “Christ the Lord
Has Risen Today,” they sang so loudly, Judy Iverson and her harp couldn’t be heard.
Just as Sam stepped up to the pulpit to give the closing prayer, Fern Hampton waddled out of her pew and made her way to the front of the meetinghouse. “Excuse me, Sam. I got an announcement to make.” She turned toward the congregation. “As you may or may not know, today is Sam’s fifth anniversary with us. Now I know there were some of you who didn’t think he’d last that long, but here we are, still together. Well, anyway, the elders got together last week and we decided to have coffee and donuts after church today to celebrate Sam bein’ with us. I hope you all can stay.”
If there had a been a feather in the meetinghouse, it could have knocked Sam over.
Though most of them had hams in the oven back home, they stayed anyway, drinking coffee and eating donuts and shaking Sam’s hand, thanking him for his service. They crowded around Dale, who told them of his narrow escape from liberalism. But the star of the day was Amanda, who received her admirers with such composure she reminded everyone of royalty.
“Isn’t she something?” Ellis said to Ralph, looking on from the edge of the throng.
“You did a fine job, brother.”
“I never did sell that mobile home,” Ellis said. “It’s still sitting in the field. Kept the electricity on to keep it heated, and we’d go over once a month or so to keep it dusted. Why don’t you and Sandy move back in. Amanda’s been talking about spending more time with you before she goes off to college. We can move her things over and you can be a family again.”
Ralph didn’t say anything. A tear leaked from his right eye, and he brushed it away. “A family,” he said finally.
The next morning, Ellis drove his stock truck into town and moved Ralph and Sandy’s belongings out to the farm. Then they hauled Amanda’s clothes and bedroom furniture across the field and arranged them neatly in the back bedroom of the mobile home.
A Change of Heart Page 17
