Rachel's Prayer

by Leisha Kelly

  Months were going by with us still not knowing what happened to Joe. Frank liked to talk about him every once in a while, but he didn’t admit to anyone but me the way he really felt. I think he’d settled it in his heart that Joe was probably gone to be with the Lord. I couldn’t agree, not till we knew for sure, but maybe it was more peaceful for Frank to picture Joe in heaven than suffering in the unknown. I didn’t like to think about it much. It made me cry.

  I turned seventeen in August, and it wasn’t the happy day a birthday ought to be, because things didn’t feel normal at all the way I’d hoped. Things were even more uncertain than they’d been when Robert went away.

  A couple of weeks after that, Charlie Hunter at the Marathon station in Dearing asked Dad to come and work for him. He said he was friends with one of the foremen who was drilling for oil west of us and that fellow wanted him to come work with him a while. So Charlie needed somebody to run the station while he was gone. Business might be a little slower because of gasoline rationing, but he still wanted to keep the place open. And he liked that Dad was reliable and knew a thing or two about servicing cars. They’d been friends for years, and Charlie was sure he’d made the right choice.

  But Dad didn’t answer right away. I could tell he thought leaving the farm for that many hours would put a lot on Mom. And on Frank and Mr. Hammond too. Dad would hardly have time for the wood-working business at all. But I told him I’d keep on helping with the farmwork. It was making me stronger, I could tell. And Harry and Bert were a help too. They were strong young men.

  Dad and Mom talked it over, and then talked it over some more. It took a week to finally make the decision. If we could keep the farm up too, there was more cash money in this than we’d had since Pennsylvania, because Charlie was willing to pay a good wage. There were a lot of things we could do with extra money.

  “Buy war bonds,” Mom said.

  “That’s part of it,” Dad answered her. “We wouldn’t have to worry for winter anymore. And we could start one of the girls in nursing school or teacher college if they wanted to go.”

  Mom and I were cutting up buckets of tomatoes for canning. With her hands dripping juice, Mom turned with a sigh and looked up at Emma Graham’s old cuckoo clock that just made clicking noises now on the hour instead of opening up. Dad and Frank had both said they could fix that thing, but neither of them had found the time.

  “Samuel,” Mom said with such a heavy sound in her voice that I stopped cutting for a minute. “Samuel, it’s eight miles to town. Charlie only lives a block from the station. Won’t you want to be closer too?”

  “Eight miles isn’t so far. And they’ve been talking again about spreading rock on our road. This time I think it’s going to happen. I told Mr. Mueller what happened to Rorey, and he went and complained to the county people. He said there’s going to be something done about it, that it’s a matter of public safety to have decent roads.”

  “There’s more involved than that.”

  “I know. He went to the electric company too, and they told him that if the farmers would pay an earnest on the cost, they’d be willing to start the work of bringing the line this way. We could have electric, Julia. Right here on the farm.”

  “But we can’t pay. Neither can George.”

  “Maybe we could if I took this job. We could get a refrigerator just to make things easier. But you could keep canning. I love all your canning.”

  Mom smiled at him. “Do you really want to stay on the farm?”

  “Where else would we fit in like this? God put us here, Juli. I wouldn’t leave unless I knew it was his planning.” Mom got up and hugged Daddy, juicy hands and all, and got tomato splotches on his shirt. “Oh! Oh, Samuel, I’m sorry.”

  “No problem. I like tomatoes. Inside and out.”

  So it was settled. Dad started driving to work in Dearing early every morning, and Katie went with him on the days Mrs. Mendel needed her at the five-and-dime. On rainy days, they planned to borrow one of Mr. Hammond’s horses, but they didn’t need to do that but once the rest of that year. Before long, Dad and Katie both went to the office of the local war bond chairman and pledged to invest ten percent of their pay every week to war bonds. He gave them little target lapel buttons to wear that had a 10% on them. The bond chairman said that if enough people wore them, it would motivate everyone else, so he gave Katie one too, even though she was just sixteen and not working as many hours.

  Rorey was anxious to get her job back, so Dad took her in sometimes, and Mrs. Mendel was willing to let her try. But she’d taken to Katie, and she really wanted Katie to stay. After a while she told Rorey that. And Rorey got really mad. It didn’t matter what Katie said. Poor Katie even tried to quit so Mrs. Mendel would want Rorey again, but Rorey stayed mad, and Mrs. Mendel said she might not want Rorey anyway because Rorey talked to some customers too much and to others not near enough.

  For a while I felt bad for not going to work in the five-and-dime myself when I’d had the chance. Maybe Mrs. Mendel would have been glad to have Rorey back if I’d been the one to replace her, and then Rorey wouldn’t have been so mad at Katie.

  But by the first of September, Rorey had found another position, at the soda fountain in the corner drug. And, oh, she liked that. She started investing in war bonds and got a lapel pin like Katie’s, and she wore it every day. She carried around a picture of Lester and told everybody that she was engaged. She talked a lot, but her new boss liked that. Young people would come in and sit at the counter just to talk to Rorey, and they’d stay so long they just had to buy a fountain drink or a sundae or something, even if they hadn’t come in the store for anything else.

  It was strange having Dad and Kate and Rorey all going to town so often. I’d always spent so much time with all three of them that I hardly knew what to do with them gone. And Robert too. The farm just wasn’t the same. It seemed half dead through the day sometimes, it was so empty. But there was still Mom. She and I kept busy with the garden and the regular things around the house, plus all the farm work we could handle. Dad said he didn’t want us trying to do too much. After all, he was home in the evenings and weekends, and he’d hardly ever sit still. There was still a lot of farming to do, and he did what he could of what needed to be done, whether it was on our property or the Hammonds’.

  Mr. Hammond had said he’d come over more and help since Dad would be gone more and we’d always been willing to help him. But it was Frank who came over every day. The Hammonds had more animals than we did, and Bert kept himself pretty well occupied with them. Harry was busy with his pa’s fields and occasional work for the Posts. They both did their share with their farm, but without Frank we’d never have managed. A year ago, he’d had plenty of time for his wood carving, but this year, he seemed to be trying to fill Robert’s shoes and William’s both. I worked alongside him all I could, and it helped me not to miss so badly the way things had been.

  “We used to run around in the creek all day in the summer,” I reminded him one day. “We used to make silly little pots out of clay and bird’s nest hats and things like that. Do you remember?”

  “Idle time is the luxury of youth,” Frank answered me without even looking up.

  I didn’t know if he’d made that up or heard it somewhere. “I know it,” I told him. “And I know things have to change, and we have to grow up. But I kind of miss it, don’t you? I mean lazy play, catching fireflies and all. Remember when your family taught my family ‘twelve o’clock the ghosts come out’?”

  “That’s a pretty silly game, Sarah Jean,” he said somberly, stopping only long enough to wipe his brow. I wondered if he wished I’d leave him alone and let him think. He was cutting hay with a hand sickle, and I was trying my best to rake it behind him, but I knew that when he finished his job, he’d be starting in to help me with mine.

  “Frank? Do you believe everything that happens has a reason?”

  It took him a minute to say anything. I thought at first that he
’d gotten swept up in some quick thought and didn’t even hear me. But then he answered. “Yes. I do.”

  I had no idea what I was starting him on when I asked the next question. “Then do you suppose everything, even a silly little game, has a purpose?”

  “I guess so. But games is pretty unfocused. I mean, they don’t fit with nothin’ you’re trying to accomplish to get you anywhere. So I figure the purpose of them kind of pleasures is distraction, to give the mind a break from the worries a’ the mundane. Trouble is, it ain’t but a step from distraction to temptation, where we’s tempted off from responsibility. Excitement an’ ease can be just as much curse as blessin’. Maybe more. That’s the way I see it.”

  I stared at him. “You sound like a preacher . . . I think.”

  “You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. But I never would have thought it through like that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” He smiled. “I done it for you.”

  It was a rare moment. I’d seen Franky dripping with sweat plenty of times through this summer. But right then he seemed practically content, even pleased with himself, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him look that way before. “Frank, can I ask you something else? About the purpose of things?”

  “That’s deep kinda questions, an’ I can do my best if that’s what you want. But you might do a heap better goin’ straight to the pastor or the Word of God.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t always understand what I read, and the pastor’s not here to talk to. I just want to know. Is the purpose of trials to make us want more of God? Do you think if things were easy, we wouldn’t even think about needing him?”

  “Lot of folks wouldn’t,” Frank acknowledged with a sigh. “Lot of folks don’t. That’s why Jesus said it’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Too easy for a rich man to think he’s already got what he needs.”

  “Well, then, did this war start so we’d pray to God more?”

  “I reckon there’s a lot more to it than that, Sarah Jean.”

  “I mean underneath everything else. God’s reason. Men might have all kinds of reasons, but if everything has a purpose, I want to know about that. What’s the purpose of war?”

  “That ain’t a question for me,” Frank answered solemnly. “That’s a question for God hisself.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to ask him. At least not in a way I get an answer.”

  “It takes being patient,” he said with a quiet sigh. “God don’t always answer direct. Sometimes he wants to know if you think he’s important enough to wait on.”

  I felt like I’d just tapped into something I needed. “Is that in the Bible?”

  “Pretty much. But not in them words. You know verses like ‘they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,’ and the story about Daniel waitin’ twenty-one days for the answer to his prayer.”

  I leaned on my rake a little. Mom had read the whole Bible to Frank over the course of two school years. I wondered if there was any of it he didn’t remember. “There’s a lot I don’t understand,” I told him. “I don’t even know how to think things through.”

  “You’re thinkin’ fine, or you wouldn’t be askin’ questions.” He kept right on working, and I tried to. I didn’t say anything more for several minutes. Rachel’s prayer was occupying my mind again, and I don’t know why I didn’t come right out and ask him what I’d wanted to all along.

  “Frank?”

  He was slicing sickle through hay in a fluid motion, on and on, back and forth.

  “Frank? Do you understand God better than you used to?”

  He stopped cold.

  “I mean, are we supposed to?” I asked on. “Are we supposed to know him better than we did at first? I always thought it was all the same. You believe or you don’t believe. You know?”

  “I think you better ask your pa to have the pastor over.”

  I almost dropped the rake. “I don’t know if I could ask him, Frank. It’s like when you said you wanted me to be your friend. And you told me things you couldn’t tell anybody else. I get nervous with the pastor. I feel foolish talking to anybody else about some things. But I knew you’d understand and that I could talk to you. Please.”

  He looked perplexed. “I ain’t sure what you’re wantin’, Sarah.”

  “I want to know if I’m missing something, if I’m supposed to understand things better by now and know what I’m talking about and what the preacher’s talking about and everything else.”

  “Nope,” he said flat out, much to my surprise. And then he continued. “If I understand you right, there’s two ways I can answer that, an’ the most important one is nope.”

  I dropped my rake completely that time. “What do you mean?”

  “You wanna know if I understand God better? The answer is nope. If you’re talkin’ ’bout my head, I don’t understand him at all. I don’t know half what I used to think I did. Sometimes I just got to shake my head and ask him what in the world he’s doin’. But the heart’s different. Maybe my head’s all turned around, but my heart knows he’s got us in a good place, and we’re gonna be all right one way or another. He’s bringin’ us up through things the way he does so we’ll question, and look for him, and find peace. He keeps drawin’ us closer, so we grow up like the Word says and not be babes anymore. Does that make any sense?”

  “I think so.” He’d given me a double answer. Can we understand God? No. Can we grow in understanding? Yes. At least that’s the way I understood it. I picked up the rake.

  “You’re somethin’ special, Sarah Jean,” he said suddenly. “Why? Why do you think so?”

  “’Cause you wanna know, that’s all. That’s somethin’ special.”

  He went back to his work, but I had a hard time concentrating on the haying. I kept thinking about Frank on the Ferris wheel looking out over the blue sky and talking about mountains and hills breaking forth in song. I knew it was Psalms he’d been quoting, or at least I thought it was now, but it stuck in my mind like a gift. Frank thinks I’m special? Frank, who understands temptations and distractions and being drawn closer into the peace of God?

  I felt like writing my brother another letter. I felt like asking him, Did you know? Did you know when you told me to help Frank that I’d be doing my own wandering mind a favor?

  That night, when everything was quiet and I was supposed to be in bed, I tiptoed down the stairs and found Mom awake in the sitting room, on her knees in front of the rocking chair.

  “Are you praying for Robert?”

  “Yes, honey. And Joe and the rest. And you. All of us.”

  I went and sat beside her. “Something’s happening to me, Mom.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m looking at Frank different. I think he’s looking at me different.”

  She was quiet. I hadn’t expected that.

  “You’re not going to ask me any questions?”

  “I don’t know what ones to ask yet. Would you like to tell me more?”

  “I wouldn’t say anything to anybody else. I’m probably just being silly. But we’ve been talking kind of deep. We don’t talk like kids anymore. But that’s how I used to feel. Like I was just a kid, and he was just a kid. Rorey’s brother.”

  “I guess he’s more than Rorey’s brother to all of us by now.”

  “You really like him, don’t you, Mom?”

  “He’s a good man. One of a kind, I think.”

  “We’ve been talking about God.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad.”

  “I’ve been talking to Robert about God too. In my letters. He says he’s called. But I think we all are. Frank and me just as much as Robert and Rachel. Just in our own ways. Does that make sense?”

  “It makes plenty of sense.”

  “I’m not as scared about things as I was. I mean for Robert. There’s plenty of other things to worry about, I guess, but I think Frank’s right that Robert’s goin
g to be okay.”

  She hugged me. And I didn’t feel like I needed to say anything else. Mom had heard what she needed to hear. And whatever she thought I meant about Frank was all right with her. She trusted me. She trusted him. Most of all, she trusted God.

  22

  Julia

  A year ago I wouldn’t have imagined so many changes. Both of the girls out of school. Robert overseas. And Samuel working in town, of all things. I wondered at Sarah a little, because she worked like she was trying to take her brother’s place. But rather than wearing her down too much, she seemed to like it. And Katie helped me all she could when she was home. Things were a little better than I expected, but that’s just like God to work things out better than we know to plan.

  In the back of everyone’s minds were the unanswered questions about Joe. We hadn’t heard anything at all from him or from the war department, and it was hard on all of us. Especially George, but he seemed to be doing all right now. He worked his farm like he had been before and was right in the middle of everything going on with his family again. Many times he sat back and listened to Rorey go on and on about what she wanted at her wedding.

  “You can have what you fancy if you save your money, girl,” was about the only thing he had to say about it.

  Harry, Bert, and Emmie were back to school in September, but George let Harry skip a lot of days to help with the farm despite Franky’s objection. I could see both sides of that issue and didn’t offer my opinion at all. Emmie came telling me that their teacher was starting a drive to collect cards, games, and records for the USO. We didn’t have much to give of that kind of thing, but Katie bought a box of cards, a jigsaw puzzle, and a checker set from the five-and-dime for her to contribute. Sarah and I started spending an hour in the evenings knitting sweaters and headwear for the Red Cross. We knew that what we made would go to military camps and hospitals, so I prayed for the soldiers as I sat knitting. Emmie liked to join us at that when she was at our house. She said she’d like to be an army nurse some day, or better yet, a cook to feed all the men.