Rachel's Prayer
Page 28
“Okay.” I watched him for a minute, leaning over the car engine, his strong hands on one part or another that I didn’t even know the name of.
“Do you wish you didn’t have to haul me to work?” I asked.
“No,” he said without looking up. “I believe if you quit, I’d be missin’ the highlight of my day.”
“I should have read to you a long time ago, if you like stories that much.”
He still didn’t look up. “It’d be the highlight if you never read at all.”
I opened the book to the place I’d marked. I wasn’t sure how to respond. After a moment of silence, he looked my way. “I hope I didn’t fluster you, sayin’ something like that.”
“Oh, no,” I stammered. “Not at all.”
“To be plain honest,” Frank admitted, “I been worried quite a while about flusterin’ you. I been thinkin’ you oughta be mad at me, but you don’t never seem to be.”
“Why would I be mad?”
He lowered his eyes a moment and took in a deep breath. “I’m not feelin’ very brotherly to you, Sarah Jean. Nor neighborly neither.”
I stood with my heart doing flip-flops as his meaning sunk in. Of course he couldn’t feel like my brother. Or just a neighbor anymore. There’d been moments between us different than that for quite a while if we chose to admit it. And it must be time. I laughed. “That’s good. Because I don’t feel sisterly to you. Or neighborly either. Not a bit.”
He stared at me for a minute. “That’s good,” he finally said, and turned back to the car engine. “That’s real nice to know.”
Things were not the same between us after that. We did things together that had nothing to do with his work or mine. I never even considered dating anybody else. Neither did he, so far as I could tell. We talked a lot, about our blended-together family and what the future might hold. By the time the war was over and we heard the blessed, glorious news on the radio, we were so used to each other and everybody seeing us together that we kissed in celebration, right in front of everybody.
About three months later, we got a letter from someone in Rochester, Minnesota. There was no name on the outside of the envelope, but we all got a start looking at the inside signature. Joseph Earl Hammond the third. Mom read the letter out loud to everybody.
“I’ve been owing you this letter for a long time,” the other Joe Hammond wrote.
I did you wrong, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I knew your Joe. We both thought it was funny finding somebody that shared our name. We hit it off right away. Then just two weeks after I met him, he went missing, and it hit me hard. I didn’t mean to steal your letters. The first time was an accident. They just handed me a letter that was meant for him. I told myself I’d save it for him. I shouldn’t have read it, but I was so lonely for home I was almost out of my mind. I was sick with malaria, thinking dying would be better, and your letter picked me up even though it wasn’t for me.
I kept on claiming the mail for Joe Hammond. I kept the carved wooden cross with me, thinking someday I’d send it back, but I finally gave it to a Filipino family that had almost nothing but the shirts on their backs. They called it the peace of angels. But it wasn’t mine to give, and I hope you can accept my feeble apology.
I couldn’t eat your cookies. I gave them to my friends. And then I felt like I was a miserable cheat to be doing what I was doing. I knew it was all because of a mix-up or my company clerk would have caught on by then. When your Joe was confirmed to be lost, I knew the letters would stop. And I felt too guilty to write to you.
You have every right to resent what I did. I was a thief of the goodwill that should have been his, and I don’t deserve anything now but your contempt. But I want you to know that the 91st Psalm you sent in your Christmas box saved my life. I would never have made it without that little piece of hope. I kept it pinned to my shirt wherever we went. I still carry it, in my wallet now. I think I always will. Your Joe was a good man. I never meant to do anything disrespectful of his memory or of your love for him. Forgive me. But I had to thank you. Because I owe you far more than these petty words can describe.
Mom’s hands were shaking by the time she got done reading. Everybody was quiet. Hearing that letter was like revisiting all the sorrow we’d worked through after being told of Joe’s death. Even Frank cried. But then it was peace, knowing we’d ministered to a need. After so much time, none of us were upset with that man. Instead, his letter left a good feeling because it seemed that Joe had managed to give his friend, and us, one last gift. We wrote back so the Minnesota Joe Hammond would know that we weren’t angry, that we were glad God had used our letters to help him through a terrible time. “Our Joe,” as he called him, would not have minded that.
“God works in mysterious ways,” Frank said, “his wonders to perform.”
Eventually, we learned that Joe was to receive the Bronze Star military award for distinguished service. And it made us proud, though nobody could ever really quit missing him. Things weren’t the same without Mr. Hammond, either. Frank said that if our life was a book, his father’s absence was like pages torn out and thrown aside, whole sections of the story lost and never to be recovered. Who knows what we might have missed? The rest of the story was a good one, though. Kirk and Willy came home all right. Robert kept getting stronger. Even Rorey seemed to be okay, though she decided to stay in St. Louis.
So many things had happened in the war years. Some awful, awful things. But in everything, God brought good. It seemed like we were stronger than we’d ever been. And not just us. The whole country was stronger. Because we’d pulled together, we’d picked up hammer, or plow, or gun, to do what had to be done, whether in the Pacific, in Europe, or at home.
I felt closer to God than I’d ever felt in my life. And I wasn’t alone in that. Robert went forward to talk to the pastor one Sunday and tell him he’d finally realized why nothing around could give him the kind of satisfaction he thought he needed. He was called to the mission field. And Rachel was in agreement. They wanted to go back to the Pacific islands and preach the goodness and love of God.
That scared Mom some, because Robert still needed his crutches most of the time. And the Pacific was so far away. But she was proud too. She knew it was right.
“Sing unto the Lord a new song,” Frank quoted to them from Isaiah. “And his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof.”
We went home from church that day happy. We had a picnic among the flowers in our yard. Frank was relaxing on a blanket with Lizbeth’s Mary Jane next to him. And I was sitting close by, just glad we were together. Emmie watched us for a while and then asked if we would be going to the mission field too.
“Whither we go, or stay, tomorrow or the present day, is all in the hands of God,” Frank answered her. “For to will and to work we do his pleasure, so long as our hearts seek his treasure. This day and the day to come, till we meet Christ here, or he calls us home.”
He reached and took my hand. I wasn’t sure I understood all of what he meant by what he said. Or what he was quoting from. But I didn’t ask. It seemed to me a good thing to let my future, my heart, and his, rest where he said they belonged: in the hands of God. No other hands could be so capable. None could be more generous, more able to give peace in trials, strength in despair, and understanding in the midst of a confusing world.
Blessed be God, the Father of mercies, the giver of peace. Now and forever. Amen.
Leisha Kelly is the author of two inspirational fiction series. She and her husband live in an old house in small-town Illinois where they are busy with the ministries of their church and the education of their two children.
For more information on Leisha and her books, go to www.leishakelly.com.
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