On the Trail of the Truth

by Michael Phillips

  Between the storm and the article, I’d turned eighteen. And there couldn’t have been a better birthday present than this.

  When everybody was finally done reading it, Katie congratulated me, and Uncle Nick threw his arm around my shoulder and pretended to pinch my cheek. Mrs. Parrish, bubbly and happy that it had all turned out so well, was saying things about all the articles I was going to write in the future.

  But Pa was the quietest of all. He didn’t say a word until the hubbub from everyone else had died down. Then he just stuck out his hand toward me. I took his hand and he gave mine a big firm shake and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Corrie Belle,” he said, “I reckon you’re a woman now. You done this on your own, without me or your ma, though I guess you had your share of help from Almeda here. But no matter—you went out there after them kids. And that was a right brave thing to do—though maybe a mite foolhardy—”

  Everyone laughed.

  “You went after ’em. Then you thought how to write it down. You done that too. And with whatever help you had, I figure it’s you that newspaper guy and them girls got to thank.”

  He paused, then added, “Anyhow, Corrie Belle, what I’m trying to say is that you’re a mighty fine young woman—and you done your pa proud.”

  I held on to his hand an extra moment or two, my eyes glistening with tears as I took in the face I loved so much. God had been so good to me!

  In that moment I was more full and more thankful and more proud than I had ever been in my life.

  Chapter 12

  Summer of ’55

  The snowstorm, the article, and what Pa said to me that night, all seemed to be part of the Lord pointing me toward my future. Hindsight makes it easier to see those kinds of things when your life takes new directions. And as I’ve looked back, I’ve felt that God may have brought about the events of the blizzard and then the article getting published right after the prayers I’d prayed about my future.

  Even as I was still down on my knees praying in the wet grass behind that oak tree near the school, somewhere up in the clouds way up high in the sky those snowflakes were getting ready to fall. God was telling me, “You see, Corrie, even before you’re through praying, I’m already sending the answers down to you. You may not realize it, but these little snowflakes are going to come down onto you, and I will use them to show you that I am answering your prayers, and will send you out into your future. I will use these snowflakes to show you that I am giving you the desire of your heart too, Corrie, which is to write.”

  That time of prayer and trying to give my whole self more completely to God, and then the article that came later, set me on a path I would never turn back from. I said to God, “Here is my life, my future . . . here are my worries . . . You know what I want to do . . . I am willing to do and be anything you want me to be.” And then God seemed to say back to me, “I will take your life, Corrie, and I will work my will in it, and at the same time I will give you more than you could ever hope for, even more than you prayed for.”

  Ever since, whenever I see snowflakes falling to the ground, I think of them as beautiful tiny little remembrances of God’s answers to prayer. For every prayer we pray, even before we’re through praying it, God is already sending millions of answers down to us, answers we may not see or recognize, but they are from him nevertheless. Falling snow always helps me remember that God is so completely above us that we can never escape his quietly falling blessings and answers to prayers and his love and care.

  Thus, I always look back on that time as the end of my childhood and the beginning of my being an adult. Not just because I’d turned eighteen, but because I’d let go of my worries (which kind of represented my past), and God had sent me out toward my future with a glimpse (that first newspaper article) of what it was I would be doing in the years to come. Just as Pa’s and Almeda’s life together was just beginning, so too was mine as a grown-up.

  For the rest of that school year I kept helping Miss Stansberry at the school, and then after I was done, working at the Freight Company two or three days a week. But even before school broke off for the summer in June, I think I’d decided not to be Miss Stansberry’s assistant the following fall when it started back up again. Whether it was the thinking and praying about my future, I don’t know. And I still considered teaching school one of my “options” that perhaps I’d think about someday. Maybe I figured it was time to take a break from school, even though I liked being part of it. It might be that God was, like the verse said, “directing my path” by getting me to think about different things. It’s hard to say. I was still too new at trying to figure out about what Almeda called “God’s guidance.” But I felt I ought to do something else for a spell. So my plan was to work more at the Freight Company that next year, and of course Almeda thought it was a terrific idea.

  The summer of ’55 was one of the happiest times I can remember. The weather was nice, and everything went perfectly. The mine didn’t cave in and nobody got hurt and everybody got along real fine. We all moved permanently from the house in town out to the claim. That made Pa happy, because he’d fixed up the house so nice, and it was plenty big—big enough for all seven of us.

  Tad and Becky weren’t just little runts anymore, but were ten and twelve. No one worried about them getting lost as we had when we’d first come, and they were all over the place. Emily was fourteen, still quiet and beautiful. Zack was well past sixteen and was a strapping tall young man with the beginnings of a beard showing on his face and muscles gradually starting to bulge out on his arms. He helped Pa at the mine on most days, although he was over at Little Wolf’s most days too, riding and breaking horses. Pa’d mutter about the two of them being “plumb loco” on account of what they did with the horses. But it was plain to see that Pa was proud of Zack’s being such a tough and hardworking kid. Alkali Jones was around a lot too. His hair was gradually getting more gray in it, and he seemed to do a lot more cackling and talking and directing up at the mine than working.

  Uncle Nick and Katie’s son Erich, named after Katie’s grandfather who immigrated from Europe, was born on the next to last day of July. Uncle Nick said he had been thinking about naming the baby after his father, Grandpa Belle, if it was a boy, or if it was a girl calling her Agatha after Ma. But in the end it was Katie’s name that prevailed. So we had a new cousin in the family and were mighty pleased to have him.

  As you can imagine, having Katie and Almeda around sure did liven up the place! When I think back to that first winter when it was just us kids and Pa and Uncle Nick in that one little cabin, all I can do is laugh. The two women sure made it different, more homey, more lively. There was more laughter in the air, more flowers on the tables, better smells coming out of the pots hanging over the fires, and everything was a lot cleaner than back then!

  But I think it was a good thing there were two houses separated by six hundred yards, a stream, and some woods. Those two strong women under one roof would have been like Pa putting too much dynamite in the mine! As it was, they were able to be good friends and visit and talk and invite each other over and borrow things and help each other, while they both kept track of their own houses. Just like with the naming of Erich, Katie usually got what she wanted, and anybody who knows Katie knows she was more likely to stay Katie Morgan Belle than to become Mrs. Anybody! She may have been Uncle Nick’s wife, but she was still “Katie” to everybody around!

  I suppose you could say the same of Almeda too. She had been on her own for a long time and was used to thinking independently, unlike most women with a husband and five kids. Yet she was different than Katie in how she went about things. If Katie and Uncle Nick had a dispute about something, they’d say their mind—sometimes loudly!—and somehow or another figure out what to do. They laughed and kidded and sometimes hollered at each other—you could hear them clear down across the creek at our place! They argued, and then worked out their differences, kissed, and went on. Sometimes Uncle Nick go
t his way, but mostly Katie got hers.

  It was different with Pa and Almeda, although they laughed and had fun together too. Maybe it was because they were older, and both had been married before. Maybe it was because there were hurts in both of their past lives. They’d each had to face the death of someone they loved very much and were now married again, but with memories still lingering from before.

  Both Pa and Almeda were quieter when there’d be something to decide, more thoughtful, I guess. And if they had a difference of opinion—like earlier about the houses and where to live—it would get real quiet for a spell. In some ways yelling and arguing about things like Uncle Nick and Katie did was better for the other folks around. At least you didn’t have to wonder what people were thinking! When Pa and Almeda got quiet and quit talking to each other much for a day or two, it was eerie and unpleasant in the house and all us kids would tiptoe around, not knowing what to say.

  But I came to realize at such times that being quiet was their way of thinking about things. It may have been awkward for a while, but I came to see that maybe they were both quiet, not because they were angry or upset, but because they loved each other and didn’t want to say something that would hurt. They needed to think and maybe pray too. And then when they did talk, you could tell they were trying hard to think of each other, not just themselves.

  Both marriages were a year old that summer, and watching them develop was interesting for me. I’d never thought much about what it might be like to be married, and I wasn’t thinking about it in connection with myself. But being older, and being Almeda’s friend and getting to know Pa so much better before they had married made me look at them through different eyes than I could have when I was just a little kid. I did find myself wondering if I ever got married, way off in the future sometime, what it would be like. What kind of wife did I want to be, like Katie or like Almeda?

  I didn’t come to any conclusions, only that it was interesting to me, especially seeing how Almeda would try to yield to Pa as her husband. I knew that was hard for her, since she’d had to think for herself since Mr. Parrish died. And in matters like the house and how to run her business, she’d been accustomed not only to making all the decisions herself but also to thinking like a man, because she was trying to run a man’s business in a man’s world.

  Now she was married, but she still had her house and business along with a husband and a family. She had to live two different lives. She’d never had children of her own before, and here she suddenly had five! Yet she still walked into her office or met with customers who looked to her as the businesswoman she was.

  On most days she and I would go into town together in the morning. I was learning more about how the office itself operated and would process orders that came in through the mail or write up invoices. Mr. Ashton still called me Miss Hollister! With me to help in the office, Almeda had more time to go out and call on miners and see potential customers, and the incoming orders picked up as a result.

  “Your being here makes a big difference, Corrie,” she said. “If the business keeps growing, we’ll have to change the name to Parrish & Hollister, or Parrish & Daughter!”

  “How about just changing it to Hollister Mine and Freight Company?” suggested Pa that same evening when Almeda was recounting the conversation she’d had with me earlier. “You ain’t a Parrish no more, you know, Almeda.”

  I don’t think Pa meant anything by it other than just a passing comment, but afterward it was quiet for a while, and I know Almeda was thinking about how all the pieces fit. I know now that she was thinking about praying about her future and her options too, just as she was helping me do in my life. Eventually she did share with me that she went through a time of real doubt and wondering about what she and Pa ought to do. She found herself wishing Pa would give up the mine and join her in the business. Then she realized maybe she wanted it because that’s the decision Mr. Parrish had come to, and that it would be hard for Pa to want to be a part of her business if it meant sacrificing something which was his own, his dream—like the mine was. And she had to battle within herself whether she was going to be Mrs. Drummond Hollister, or if she was going to keep being Almeda Parrish with a new last name added on. Was she going to keep everything as it had been and add Pa’s family, or was she going to become part of the family, even if it meant sacrificing some of what she had been before?

  Later, when I was quite a bit older and she told me about some of these things, she said, “Every woman doesn’t have to face it the same way, Corrie. Most women just get married and their husband’s home and livelihood is about all they have to consider. And they’re perfectly content to just be part of their husband’s world. But when I married your father, it was different. And I’m so thankful that he understood. He respected me, respected that other part of my life too that had been going on before I knew him and wanted to keep going afterward as well. I think he knew I’d never want to sell the Freight Company, or would want to change the name. As proud as I was to be Mrs. Drummond Hollister, to become a ‘mother’ and join your family, I couldn’t help wanting, I suppose, to keep a part of myself—not ‘separate’ exactly, but keep it as my own, to keep being the me I have always been. As much as a man and a woman become ‘one’ when they are married, there is still that part of you that needs to know you are your own person even though you are married and have given that personhood to your husband too. I don’t know if other women think about it quite like that, but I have. Anyway, I wanted to keep the business, and to keep calling it by the Parrish name . . . because of something in me that didn’t go away when I married your father.”

  And she did keep both halves of her life going just great from what I could tell—the Almeda Parrish part and the Mrs. Drummond Hollister part. I only hoped I could do as well if there ever came a time in my life when I had to.

  Some days she’d go home early, in the middle of the afternoon, and get working on supper—we were a pretty big household to feed!—and I’d ride out later by myself. On other days we’d get a big pot of beans or stew prepared in the morning to sit all day on the fire, and Emily and Becky would make corn bread or biscuits to go with it. On those kinds of days we might both come home together after the office closed. It was always different. Maybe one or the other of us would be on a delivery and would be late, and the other would tend to the supper. Almeda was gracious about making me feel like I was still needed. And I suppose I was, even though it took some getting used to at first, not having the others depending on me for everything. Pa was a big help. He didn’t mind giving the stew a stir or adding some extra water to the pot of beans or tending lunch for the rest of the kids when neither Almeda nor I was there. We were an unusual family, but Pa didn’t seem to mind that.

  We had Katie to think about that summer too, and most evenings one of us would go up and help her with the washing of clothes or whatever else she had to do. Emily spent half of most days helping Katie with her new little baby cousin. Becky went over there a lot too, and tried to pitch in. But Becky always thought she was a bigger help than she really was! I could tell when Emily held little Erich that she wouldn’t mind being a mother herself someday!

  Even with all that was going on around home, and with the work at the Freight Company to keep me busy, I kept thinking of those words in the letter to Mrs. Parrish: Whoever your friend C.B. Hollister is, Kemble says for him to get in touch. Might be that we could use something else of his in the future. Kemble likes firsthand accounts and has been looking for this kind of thing from the foothills country.

  All summer I kept racking my brain trying to think up some other “firsthand account” I might write about to send to the Alta. A little dose of success was enough to make me think I was ready to be a real-live reporter!

  All of a sudden, about the middle of August, the idea hit me. Of course! I had the greatest possible story right in front of my nose! If it’d been any closer it would have bit me!

  The minute it came to me
I was filing the July invoices in the file drawer in the oak desk. I jumped up.

  “Almeda,” I said, trying to stay calm, “would it be all right if I went home early today?”

  “Certainly, Corrie. Is something the matter? Don’t you feel well?”

  “I feel great. It’s just that I think I’ve thought of the next story I might write and send to the Alta.”

  “Wonderful! What is it?”

  “I’d rather not say till it’s done, ma’am. But I’ll let you read it first.”

  “Go, then, Corrie!” she exclaimed, breaking into a laugh. “Go and write it. Your reading public is waiting!”

  I charged out the door and onto my horse and galloped all the way back to the claim. I hardly stopped at the cabin, but ran right up to the mine where, just like I’d figured, Alkali Jones was sitting on a rock and giving out advice to Pa and Uncle Nick and Zack.

  “Mr. Jones . . . Mr. Jones!” I said, all out of breath as I ran up to him. “I gotta talk to you.”

  “Hee, hee, hee!” he laughed, looking me over from head to foot. “Can’t be that one o’ my mules has got me in a fix. I got one right there.” He pointed to a tree where his trusty favorite was tied. “An’ Corrie Beast’s tied up where she can’t git loose nohow! Hee, hee, hee!”

  “No, it ain’t that, Mr. Jones,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Please, would you just come down to the cabin with me for a few minutes?”

  “Okay by me, Corrie Belle,” he answered, “but I don’t know if yer pa an’ uncle can find any gold in that there stream without me. Hee, hee! I know this creek better’n I know that blame mule yonder. An’ it ain’t just nobody what gits the gold outta it. That’s why I’m here, to show ’em where t’ put their sluices an’ pans an’ where t’ aim their shovels.”