Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  As if that wasn’t enough, he was not through. “Now this other thing, this business of your spending your own money to buy groceries disturbs me more than anything. Esmeralda, the board did not hire you to play God up there.”

  My blood pressure shot straight through the roof. “Roger Elmwood, I was led to believe that this is a faith ministry, and in my book, faith means trusting the Lord to provide. As for my spending my own money, let me remind you that before Jesus fed the multitudes he had the disciples bring him what they had. That’s all I was doing—just giving the Lord my loaves and fishes.”

  Before he could say one word, I set him straight about Ursula. “And as for me getting on Ursula’s nerves, I’d like to go on record as saying that she gets on my nerves, too!”

  He cleared his throat. “You listen to me, Esmeralda, it’s up to you to make this thing work. If you two can’t get along, one of you will have to go. I must warn you that the board is not only satisfied with Miss Ursula, we feel fortunate to have a director with a master’s degree.”

  I felt like spitting in his eye! “Mr. Elmwood, the Lord brought me here, and it’s here I’ll be until the Lord tells me it’s time to go!”

  “I see,” he said. “Oh yes, Mabel says to tell you hello.”

  “Have you finished?”

  “Yes, I’ve finished.”

  “Then I’m hanging up,” I said and slammed down the receiver. The nerve of that big bag of wind! I was so mad I could have spit gumdrops.

  There was no use trying to sleep, so I sat in my chair and fumed. I was so hurt and so mad I couldn’t help it; tears just spilled over. Splurgeon said, “Words often wound more than swords,” and that’s the truth if ever I heard it. You wouldn’t believe the thoughts that went through my mind. I felt like packing up and leaving—getting out of the house before anybody else got up. Ursula was nothing but a snake in the grass—there was no way I could put up with that high-handed, know-it-all, walking dictionary! She couldn’t speak a sentence but what she used them jawbreakers nobody could understand. She called herself a Christian, but there wasn’t a woman in the house who would want to be a Christian if Ursula was the only example they ever saw.

  Dr. Elsie has been on the board longer than Roger Elmwood, and she’d not stand for him dressing me down the way he did. I would have called her right then and there if she was not way up yonder in Vermont taking care of her sick sister.

  It was about 3:00 in the morning before I wore myself out and figured I better get a grip before I had to face Ursula and the women at breakfast. I got out my old King James and opened it. If ever I needed a word from the Lord it was then and there.

  My Bible was so full of stuff, and it was so marked up and falling apart, I had to handle it carefully. The way I found things in it was funny. I had a hard time remembering chapters and verses—references, you know—but I could remember what side of the page it was on and even where it was at, top or bottom. Most of the time I remembered the book a verse was in but not always. Still, I could usually find what I was looking for, and if I couldn’t I had a concordance in back.

  Like I said, I needed some word to help me get through the coming day, but I couldn’t think of anything right off the bat, so I opened to the Psalms, which always seemed to say something to my soul. As I was thumbing through, there was this one page where the corner was torn and I was wondering if I shouldn’t scotch tape it back together. That’s not always a good idea, of course. Other pages I had mended that way didn’t work too good. The tape got yellow and made the pages pucker. Smoothing out that corner, I saw verses I had underlined some time or other, so I read them. “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”

  Good heavens, wasn’t that exactly what I needed? “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age,” he said. For a little while I just sat there, letting that balm in Gilead soothe my wounded soul. It cooled me down, I tell you, and I had to ask the Lord to forgive me for being so mad, for saying them things—well, maybe not just saying them but feeling the way I did. I wanted to promise the Lord that I’d love Ursula, but the wounds were too raw to make a promise like that.

  I read on for a while and then climbed back in bed. I wasn’t feeling very good about myself, about not having enough love to go around, none for Ursula and precious little for the women in the home. If I wanted any sleep at all, I had to get my mind off it.

  As I repeated them verses to myself, something struck me funny and I had to smile. It was that last line about being “fat and flourishing.” I was willing to claim the part about bringing forth fruit in old age, but as for the “fat and flourishing” part, that was something I could do without! I wished I could tell Beatrice that one—she’d get a kick out of it.

  I slept an hour or two before the wake-up bell rang. I lay there a few minutes listening to the sounds coming from upstairs—feet padding around, toilets flushing, water running, hair dryers humming. At home I would have been up, had the coffee made, and been sitting in the recliner having my devotions by this time. The first couple hours of the day I spent that way—reading, praying, singing a hymn or two—but here in Priscilla Home there was so much commotion and so little free time, I couldn’t settle down and feel alone with the Lord. I think that was a big part of the trouble. It looked like the only way I could get back on track was to get up earlier than everybody else, but for this morning the only time I had to pray was while I was dressing and fixing my face. Before I opened my bedroom door to face the world, I asked the Lord to set a watch before my big mouth.

  At breakfast everyone was quiet, myself included, and after breakfast Ursula asked me to come in the office. Dreading what this might mean, I followed her, and we sat down across from each other.

  “Esmeralda, what is your agenda for today?”

  I answered with the first thing that popped in my head.

  “We need a garden, so I thought I would try to find someone with a tractor who’ll plow the ground for us.”

  I knew she thought this was foolish, so I was surprised when she said, “Very well. Perhaps you should take one of the ladies with you.”

  That wasn’t necessary, but I wanted to be cooperative. “Okay,” I said. “Which one?”

  “How about Linda?”

  I shook my head. “No, not Linda. She thinks she’s the bell cow.”

  “The bell cow? Whatever do you mean?”

  “Just that; she thinks she’s the bell cow.”

  She still didn’t understand but went on, “Well, I can never get a word out of Dora in the counseling session, so you might as well take her along. Try to get her to talk. If there’s no breakthrough soon, there’s no use in our keeping her here.”

  Dora and I headed out without a clue as to where to go, so we drove down the Old Turnpike. I wasn’t going to have somebody in the car without talking, so I commenced by saying we’d have to pray the Lord would lead us to where we could find a tractor and a man to drive it. “You ever drove a tractor?” I asked.

  “Nary a one,” she answered, staring straight ahead. “Tractors ain’t for hollers.”

  Whatever does she mean by that? But I wasn’t about to let on that I didn’t know. “You got any idea where we might find what we’re looking for?” I asked.

  “Follow the sun. It’ll lead you to a valley.”

  That didn’t make an ounce of sense either, but curious to find out, I took a chance. “A valley?” I repeated.

  “Valleys is for big planting. Tractors come with big planting.”

  Now that made sense.

  As we drove along we came to a break in the trees where a clearing stretched down a hillside. I didn’t see any tractor, but a flock of wild turkeys was feeding along the edge. I stopped the car and eased out my door to watch. The turkeys had their heads held high and their feathers drawn in close, and even I could see they were on the alert. I counted an even doz
en before a wild gobbler took off in flight forty feet above the ground, flying over our heads, going a good sixty miles an hour. With his head stretched forward, his feet stretched behind, he hardly flapped his wings. Gliding higher and higher, his bronze feathers shone in the sun until I lost him beyond the trees.

  When I turned around to see where the flock was, they were out of sight.

  Climbing back in the car, I said to Dora, “That was a sight to behold,” and figuring wild turkeys were nothing new to her, I asked why that gobbler didn’t flap his wings.

  “He depends on his legs more’n his wings to fly,” she told me.

  “I guess people hunt wild turkeys?”

  “There’s coon hunters and people too lazy to work lays in the woods a-shootin’ turkeys, pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, ground hogs, and the like. They’ll skin a ground hog and make strings for their boots of its hide.”

  We rounded a curve and were in the deep woods again. It was chilly and dark enough for headlights. Dora mumbled, “There’s woods spirits along about here.”

  I slowed down to a snail’s pace. “Woods spirits?”

  “Like as not.”

  Neither of us said anything, but my mind was running wild trying to imagine what she meant by woods spirits. I don’t mind telling you, that road did look spooky. “What can they do to us?”

  She was slow to answer, so I repeated the question.

  Her voice was as raspy as a dying man’s. “They’ve been known to send a pickup over a cliff.”

  I thought I better not press my luck by asking more questions, but I tell you right now, I was glad when we broke out of that overhanging thicket and saw sunlight again.

  We had not gone far when Dora leaned over the dash and looked up at something. “See, lookit yonder atop that rise.”

  I looked but all I saw was a chimney where a house had been. “You mean that chimney?”

  “See them trees all black and burnt? That house burnt to the ground, all right. . . . Fire be the devil’s work. Where he burns he leaves his spirits to guard the place.”

  “That so?”

  “Them what has sense about woods spirits don’t go near a burnt-out place. Afore I had good sense, I oncet dared it by myself. Had to find out for myself if what they say be true.”

  She stopped, and I wanted her to go on talking. “And?” I asked.

  “It was Widder MacIntosh’s place burnt to the ground afore I was borned. What’s left of the old place is the chimbley a-standin’ stout against the gales for so many years nobody knows the count. I spent all the daylight hours up there a-roamin’ ’round among them charred timbers black as Satan’s soul. The widder ain’t yet done with her place—her lilies be still a-bloomin’ up there, pushed up from the ground atwixt them timbers.

  “Oncet the wind commenced to pick up, and I could hear it singin’ in that chimbley like it was glad I was there, I thought nothin’ of plundering around about its foot, but I should have stayed shy of that. I found me a brick up there like as I never seen afore—thin and fluted both sides, four holes drilled through an’ a-covered with green moss. Purtiest brick ever I seen. Most likely the widder kept it for a doorstop. When I brung it home, that’s what I used it for, a doorstop. . . . Wisht a million times I had left it lay up thar next that chimbley where it belonged.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She would not answer.

  We had gone past where we could see the chimney, but she was still worrying on it. I got the feeling there was much more to this than she was telling. “It’s a boding thang to keep in mind—that old chimbley a-standin’ up there all by its self so stout the devil hisself can’t knock her down.”

  We were coming to what looked like a road on the left, and she told me to turn. “This here’s a valley road.”

  It was hardly a road, more like a lane with two ruts running underside the mountain on the left and dropping down fifty feet or more on the right. Dora was holding on to the dashboard and leaning toward my side of the car like she was holding the Chevy away from that steep drop-off. When we got beyond some trees that were blocking the view, I could see a stream winding through a meadow below. Sun reflecting on the water made a yellow ribbon of it. Dora was right, this was a valley road.

  We had hugged the mountain for less than half a mile when we saw a tar-paper shack clinging to a small patch of level land between the road and the embankment. There was a woodshed with cordwood stacked neatly, an area of mowed lawn, and a slope going up to the road with rhododendron and blueberry bushes.

  What lay below the embankment on the far side of the shack, I could not see, but a pull-off place beside the woodshed was where I aimed the Chevy and stopped. “Maybe somebody here can tell us where we can find a tractor, Dora.”

  We got out of the car to see if anybody was around. Smoke was coming out the chimney, so I figured there must be somebody around. In back of the house and down the hill a piece was an outhouse with the door open. Not likely anybody would be in there with the door wide open—on the other hand, there might be, but I for one was not about to go look.

  A porch on the front of the house was just big enough for a bench where somebody could sit and look out over the valley. Across the valley, alders and willows bordered the stream, and a flock of crows were flying overhead, cawing. I called out, “Anybody home?” Nobody answered and nobody stirred in the house. There wasn’t a soul in sight, much less a tractor. I was ready to give up when I heard a horse snorting. Sounded like it was coming from below the embankment, so we went over to the edge to see. An apple tree clung to the side of that steep incline, and where the ground leveled out flat at the bottom, there was a fenced-in garden plot. At first the tree hid the horse hitched to a plow, but then I noticed it looked like somebody had just stopped plowing in the middle of a row.

  All of a sudden, Dora scrambled down that bank like a billy goat, and then I saw what she saw. A man was lying on the ground apparently asleep or drunk or something. I slipped and slid my way down to find out what was what.

  When I got down there, I saw he was older than me by some years, white as a sheet and holding his chest. “What’s wrong, Dora?”

  “A-hurtin’ in his chest,” she said.

  Sweat was pouring off him, and Dora was trying to help him sit up. “Leave him lay, Dora.” It looked to me like he was having a heart attack. “We got to get him to a doctor.” I looked around to see if there was a way I could get the car down there, and I saw that the road did wind around the apple tree down to the level of the garden. “I’ll bring the car around,” I told Dora and got back up the bank on my hands and knees.

  By the time I drove the car down there, Dora had the fellow on his feet. She opened the door, and together we managed to get him inside. “You get in the back, Dora.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll wait here,” she said, and I had no time to waste asking why.

  On the way into town the man told me his name was Lester Teague; it was plain to see he was a mountain man, born and bred. His bib overalls looked to be as much a part of him as Dora’s hunting coat was a part of her. Sick as he was, he didn’t talk much. I figured he had to be at death’s door to be letting me take him to the hospital.

  When Lester started gasping for breath, I got scared we might not make it into town, so I speeded up. Once we left the turnpike and were on the paved road, I really pressed the pedal to the metal, gunned it up hills and whipped around curves with my tires squealing for mercy!

  Well, we made it. They took Lester right away, gave him an EKG and so forth. We spent hours in the emergency room. Reminded me of the time I took Maria to the hospital, her sick unto death and me not knowing her name. She was Spanish, and the only name I could think of was Carmen Miranda, so when I checked her in, that’s the name I used. I had to bluff our way in because she didn’t have insurance or nothing.

  Lying about who Maria was had cost me plenty! I should have known I wouldn’t get away with that lie because never in my life h
ave I ever got away with anything I done wrong. As soon as Maria died, it all came out, and the hospital started billing me for her treatment and those days she spent in that private room. At first I balked. Then I stalled. But in the end I had to admit it was my responsibility. I was glad for the job at Priscilla Home because the three hundred I got each month went right on that bill.

  The doctor wanted to keep Lester overnight for observation, but the old man wouldn’t hear of it. Lester hobbled over to the cashier, took out a roll of bills, and peeled off enough to pay his fee. Everybody’s mouths dropped open. The doctor gave Lester some pills and told him to put one under his tongue when he had chest pains and to go to his personal physician for a checkup. The chances of Lester Teague having a “personal physician” was about as remote as me having a Cadillac. I could have told that little intern right then and there that Lester Teague would not be going to any doctor, but that was better left unsaid.

  On the way back to Lester’s place, I had to stop for gas. Once I filled up I had four or five dollars left. Back in the car, I did the talking. I told Lester we were from Priscilla Home; he knew the place. Told him about the turkeys. Told him we were looking for a tractor. Asked him whose house was it that had burned. All he said was that it had burned the night of the big storm a few years back. “Lightning hit it.”

  By the time we got back to his house, Lester had stopped holding his chest. But before I let him get out of the car, I looked for Dora. I could hear something going on down by the garden and went to the edge of the bank to see. Lo and behold, she had finished the plowing and was watering the horse. Seeing me, she wrapped the reins around the plow handle and climbed up to where we were at.