Fields Of Gold

by Marie Bostwick

  “Thank you.” I smiled. “I hope you are right.”

  He glanced furtively at his wristwatch as though he had remembered something more important and was anxious to leave. I felt suddenly embarrassed for taking up his time. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer.” I said, starting to rise from my chair. “I’m sure you have so many other things you must be doing this morning. When Mama wakes up I’ll tell her you called. She’ll be sorry to have missed you.” I stood up stiffly and busied myself picking up the empty water glasses.

  The young minister looked surprised and stammered an apology, “Oh, forgive me, Miss Glennon. You must have so many things to do. I didn’t mean to keep you from them. I’ll come back another time.” I detected the barest pink blush of embarrassment on his cheeks. Somehow I had misread him, and now he thought I wanted him to leave. It was my turn to apologize.

  “No, Pastor,” I started clumsily, “I don’t have anything to do! Nothing important, I mean. You can stay. I just saw you looking at your watch and felt like a fool sitting here taking up your time when you really came to talk to Mama, but you can stay if you want to.” I silently cursed myself again for my awkwardness. “I mean, I’m enjoying talking with you. Please, I’d like you to stay longer, if you can.”

  His face broke into a grin, and he laughed a short, rumbling laugh. I realized it was the first time anyone had laughed in our house since Papa died. “Miss Glennon, please forgive me. Glancing at my watch is a bad habit of mine. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Someone gave me this as a gift when I came to America. Whenever I look at it I calculate what time it is in Holland and wonder what everyone is doing there. I must think of a way to stop myself.” He smiled genuinely.

  “If I’m not keeping you from your work,” he continued, “I’d like to stay longer and talk with you. I did come to see your mother, but I wanted to see you as well. I had hoped we could talk and perhaps become friends. You see”—he looked at me earnestly—“I feel so much like an outsider, so foreign, and not just because of my accent.”

  I nodded encouragement, and he went on. “I have lived in America for five years now, but never have I felt so out of place as I do in this little town. Of all the people I have met since I came, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, you seemed most like myself.” I thought I saw him glance in the direction of my twisted leg, and I pulled it more closely under my skirt. “As though you don’t quite belong, either. Perhaps you can help me understand these people a little better.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said wryly. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I don’t know that I understand them now any better than I ever did. If you want to be accepted by the town, being seen spending much time with me won’t help your cause much.” Despite their recent sympathy and acceptance of my new role as head of the Glennon family, filling the space left by Papa and abdicated by Mama, I still felt bitter toward the nice women of Dillon. I had cut through their sea of accusing stares and wakes of whispering for too many years to believe they’d forgiven and forgotten my past sins. No, it wouldn’t do a new pastor any good at all to be seen with me.

  “Oh yes,” he said, nodding seriously, “your boy, Morgan. I wanted to ask you about him. Who is his father? Does he ever see him? I also wanted to ask about your leg. Were you born with it this way, or did you injure yourself?”

  My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe he was asking me these things. I had admired his candor, but to ask such personal questions of someone he had just met! People who had known me all my life would never have asked me such things. They’d have talked about them, certainly, speculated, and asked the neighbors what they thought and then heard the story third-hand, but to come right out and ask, “So, who fathered your bastard son and why are you a cripple?” These were not things you said to someone’s face. Not in Dillon. The young minister was right. He was not going to fit in here.

  “Pastor, you don’t just ask questions like that! Not of someone you barely know. Besides,” I murmured, embarrassed, “you probably have already heard all kinds of stories about me.”

  “No,” he said simply. “And even if I had, I wouldn’t have paid attention. Gossip is not only sinful, it’s usually inaccurate. What people say about themselves is so much more interesting.”

  “But, Pastor,” I protested.

  “Look here.” He frowned impatiently. “I want to get to know you, not what others whisper about you, but what you believe about yourself. I need a friend here, and from what I can see, so do you. Now, how are we to be friends if I can’t ask you questions? Unless I am mistaken and you don’t need a friend.” He looked at me quizzically and waited for my answer. I could not help but grin at his abrupt manner and indelicately logical reasoning.

  “No, you’re not mistaken,” I said. “I’d like to have you as a friend, Pastor, it’s just that—”

  “Good!” he said, beaming. His face, which, like his body, was long and angular, every part of him so loosely hung together that he might have been strung on wire like a puppet, seemed to grow fuller and softer when he smiled. He had a way of looking at people square on, as though there was something fascinating written in the depths of their eyes. I had been wrong in my first assessment, I realized; he was handsome, even more so when he smiled.

  “Now, is there some way we can get around this ‘pastor’ business? It makes me feel very ancient. Why don’t you call me Paul, and I can call you ... ? What is your first name, Miss Glennon?”

  “Everyone calls me Eva, but my given name is Evangeline.”

  “Evangeline,” he mulled it over it carefully. “No, that doesn’t seem right on you. Too stylized. Evangeline is the person I see before me, but clouded by a dream, unfocused. Eva suits you better. Like Eve, the first woman. She mothered the world; she was strong and adventurous.”

  “But what good did that do her?” I said. “That adventurous streak got her thrown out of the garden.”

  “That’s why your name is even better,” he said with a nod. “Eva, a distillation of that first Eve, more refined by time and experience. Though in the end, I think you will prove wiser.” His eyes twinkled, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  “There now,” he said with satisfaction. “I’ve made you laugh. Surely that clinches the deal. We’ll be friends, yes?” He extended his hand, and I shook it.

  “We’ll be friends,” I said, and I meant it, but even as I took his hand I thought, But that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you everything about myself.

  “As a friend, Paul”—his name stuck a bit uncomfortably in my throat at first—“my advice is to remember where you are. Here time is measured in seasons, not minutes. We plant seeds and water them and wait. If enough time passes and conditions are perfect, things grow. When the time is right and if the sun is hot enough, they ripen—not before and sometimes not at all. That’s the way things are. All right?”

  “All right.” Paul smiled as he accepted the bargain. “I see. Now, we can talk, but nothing too personal... .” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, searching his mind for a topic. “I know! How about the weather? Do you think it looks good for the harvest?”

  He looked so pleased with himself, I couldn’t help but laugh again. “Oh no! Anything but that! You’ll forgive me for saying so, Paul, but you’re fitting into Dillon a little too well.

  “Let’s talk about something more interesting,” I said, pointing to his wristwatch. “Tell me about that. Who gave it to you?”

  The watch was a gift from his brother, Nils. Their mother died in childbirth when Paul was four and Nils was nine. Their infant sister survived their mother by only a week. Paul’s father, who was not in good health himself, was often overwhelmed by the demands of raising his motherless boys, but he never remarried. When Nils was away at university and Paul was only fifteen, their father succumbed to diabetes. The two boys had always been close, but after their father’s death Nils became even more important to Paul as he took on the role of parent and p
rovider to his younger brother. As Paul spoke, his love for Nils shone on his face.

  “My father was also a minister, a poor one, and left no estate. We didn’t even own the house we lived in. Father’s sister said I should come live with her, but Nils wouldn’t hear of it. He left the university and came home to take a job as a painter. One of the members of my father’s old congregation gave us a place to live at a very cheap rent. Nils’s plan was that he would go back to university when I did, but there wasn’t enough money for two students in the family. He insisted I go first, and he said he would finish his education later.”

  “And did he?”

  “Well, yes and no. By the time I got my degree, I already knew I wanted to go on to the seminary, but I said nothing to Nils, knowing that if I did he would insist on supporting me until I entered the pastorate. Instead, I went home to begin looking for a job. Nils had begun helping at a school for retarded children in his free time, and just about the time I returned he was offered a full-time teaching position.

  “I tried to talk him out of accepting, saying that he finally had a chance to go back to school and he should take it. I wanted to repay him for caring for me all those years, but when I told him so he just brushed me aside. ‘I am back in school,’ he said. Then he leaned over and whispered, as though letting me in on a secret, ‘Only it’s so much better now because I get to draw on the chalkboard and no one can stop me!’”

  Paul was so animated as he imitated his brother’s mischievous confession that I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Nils loves what he does,” Paul continued proudly. “You should see how the children respond to him. When he takes his class on outings to the park, people stare at his students and pull their own children away, as though retardation were something catching. Nils doesn’t see any of that.”

  “He sounds like Papa,” I recalled.

  “To Nils, every child in his class is a genius. When one of them learns to button his coat or write his name, he picks them up on his shoulders and carries them around the room, whooping as though they had just discovered a cure for polio. He truly loves them. My brother is a good man. I miss him very much.”

  “It must have been so hard for you to leave him,” I said. “Why did you come to America? Why not just stay in Holland?”

  “Money. I couldn’t ask Nils for help on a teacher’s salary, and if I had to work while I was finishing my education it would have taken me twice as long. There was a scholarship being offered for Dutch students to attend seminary in New York, so I applied and was accepted.”

  “Didn’t you want to go back home after you graduated?”

  “Oh yes,” he answered earnestly, “more than anything. I did go back for a time, but there were hardly any positions open in Holland. I was offered an associate position in Germany; an old friend of my father’s was the pastor at that church. I almost took it so as to be closer to Nils, but after I visited, I knew I could never live there.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “It’s so close to Holland. Surely it can’t be all that different.”

  “Oh, but it is!” he exclaimed. “The language, the food, the culture, everything. Holland and Germany are two entirely different countries, but that is not what bothered me. Hitler is what I didn’t like about Germany.”

  “I’ve read about him.” I tried to remember what the newspaper articles had said. “He’s their president, isn’t he?”

  “Chancellor,” Paul corrected. “But, he’s much more powerful than a president could ever be and much, much more ambitious. There is really no one who can stop him, and the thing that bothers me is, no one even seems to want to try. Today in Germany the people don’t worship God, they worship all things German. Hitler is the high priest of their religion. He decides who does and doesn’t belong in the congregation, and they love him for it. And if a few outsiders are hurt by that, what does it matter as long as there are bread and jobs.”

  His eyes went flat for a moment and he was silent, lost in thought. Then he murmured to himself, “No one seems to care that he is a very dangerous man.”

  Paul became my friend. Not just my friend, but a friend of the entire family. We all liked him. Even Mama, who had always been so wary of strangers and private about her personal life, looked forward to Paul’s frequent visits and spent hours talking with him. Partly it was because Paul was such a good listener, but partly I think it was her way of coming to grips with Papa’s death.

  She told Paul how she and Papa had met, and how Papa had sprained his back on their honeymoon when he’d tried to carry her over the threshold. She recited a thousand chapters of their life together as though she were living it all over again, emotion by emotion. Some of them were stories even I had never heard. Sometimes I was a little jealous that she could share so much with him so easily, but mostly I was grateful, because, bit by bit, Mama seemed to be coming back to life.

  True, she was living in the past, but at least she was living. She always referred to Papa in the present tense and talked to him when she thought no one was in the room. Once, thinking it would be better for her to face the truth, I reminded her that Papa was dead. She looked at me clearly, perfectly lucid, and said, “No. It’s too soon for that.” I saw her point. It was comforting thinking of Papa as being just in the next room, still around to watch over us all. Besides, Mama was happy. I was grateful to Paul for helping revive her spirit.

  He was kind to all of us. Paul always had a smile for Ruby and praised her as the best cook in Dillon. Ruby did almost all the cooking now to give me more time for sewing the quilts that, along with Morgan’s egg business, had become our main source of income. She’d come a long way from our youth when she couldn’t tell salt from sugar, and she was justifiably proud of her skill in the kitchen. Paul’s appetite was a compliment to her achievements. He could eat an entire half of one of her apple pies in a single sitting, though he never seemed to gain an ounce.

  “I’m lucky,” he would quip. “The ladies of the church always seem bent on fattening up the minister. But gluttony is never such a pleasure as when I am sitting in Ruby’s kitchen.” He would sigh with pleasure, and Ruby would tell him to stop his foolish flattery, then fill up another plate for him.

  Morgan and Paul became great friends, and I was glad. Morgan badly needed the companionship of a man since Papa’s death. Whenever Paul came visiting he had a new book tucked under his arm that he thought Morgan might be interested in. It might be anything from a Dickens novel to a book on the inner workings of the internal combustion engine. When the weather was fine, they would go fishing together.

  Usually, after his visit with Mama and hearing all about Morgan’s day at school over one of Ruby’s huge suppers, Paul and I would sit on the porch and chat while we sipped tea, hot or iced depending on the weather. Over time, I heard all about his life and he heard all about mine—almost all. I still didn’t feel comfortable talking about Slim, even to Paul. His clerical collar made it even harder than it might have been otherwise. No matter how much I liked him, no matter how easygoing and accepting he seemed, I didn’t think a minister could understand. He saw me, I was sure, as a quiet, sensible mother and daughter who patiently bore her physical handicap by reading books and sewing straight seams. How could he possibly comprehend the kind of overpowering passion that I had known with Slim when I didn’t understand it myself? If I had told Paul about Slim, I supposed that, as a pastor, he’d want to offer forgiveness. That’s what held me back. I didn’t want to be forgiven. In the logical part of my mind, I knew that what I’d had with Slim was sin, but I wasn’t sorry for it. I would never be sorry for having Morgan or for saying yes to the brief, rapturous passion I’d shared with Slim. After all that had happened, I loved him still. He was an ocean away, but a part of me was always waiting for him to walk though the door. My hope survived, dormant, stored in darkness against the chance the skies might open and stir it to growth again. Other than the monthly letters I wrote updating him on Morgan, I willed my
self not to think of Slim, but the memory of him was etched upon my soul. I didn’t want to alter that image by examining it too closely. Paul, on the other hand, was easy to get close to. And he was easy to trust. I liked him very much. Ruby would tease me about him, but it wasn’t like that. I felt none of that crippling passion I’d had for Slim, and that was a relief. We were just friends. Not that our friendship was a small thing—not at all. It made me realize how lonely I had been. I wasn’t about to risk that friendship by telling Paul too much of my past. Thankfully, after that first day he never asked, and I never offered. Nor did I ever write Slim about Paul. Of course, I never talked about myself at all in the letters I forwarded to Slim’s lawyers, anyway. He wasn’t interested in me, I was sure, and even if he had been, I doubted he read those letters or even received them. He never answered a single one.

  June 20, 1937

  Dear Slim,

  Congratulations on the birth of baby Land. Another son! Boys seem to be your specialty. I read about it in the papers, but not until recently. News travels slowly from London. I saw too, where they reported your plane as missing over the Alps a few months back, but you turned up safe and sound once again. Sometimes I think you like disappearing just to confound the reporters. About the time they finish their big story that your plane is lost and you’ve undoubtedly perished, you turn up again, grinning and healthy, just to prove them wrong.

  Morgan is doing fine and is a greater help than ever now that Papa is gone. We don’t have as much stock as we used to, except for the chickens I told you about, but he takes care of what there is before going to school. On Saturdays he drives into town with me to sell or trade the eggs and chickens for what we need in the way of groceries. Sales of the new quilts I’m making, you remember the ones that Ruby helps me with, are steady enough so between quilts and eggs, we are making out all right.