Then Sings My Soul

by Amy Sorrells

  Jakob’s eyes locked upon his Papa’s torso by the road, ribs sticking out, the white tallit katan1 and the frayed strings of Josef’s tzitzit stuck against the ground, bloodied and ruined. Peter walked over to the corpse, took a knife from the belt beneath his coat, cut a single tassel from the garment, and tucked it into the satchel next to the silver cup.

  Then he picked up Jakob, held his trembling body against his shoulder, and took him to the front yard, where Galya waited, eyes wild, front hoof stomping with impatience. Puffs of frozen air escaped rhythmically from Galya’s giant nostrils as Peter placed Jakob on the front of the saddle. He climbed on behind, pulling on the reins to steady the horse long enough to sear the sight of the little cottage into his mind, onto his heart forever.

  Finally, with a flick of the leather and a kick of Peter’s heel, Galya seemed happy again to run, frenzied and insane, across the cruel, white countryside toward the west.

  “Faigy would’ve lived if it hadn’t been for me,” Jakob said to Nel when he finished telling her the story.

  “But, Dad, you were only four years old.”

  “That’s what Peter said. But I should’ve been able to scream or do something when the man came back. He took the rest of Papa’s stones too.”

  “You were a baby. What do you think you could’ve done?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve never forgiven myself.”

  “Dad—”

  Jakob held a hand up to stop her. “I’ve often wondered since then if Lot’s wife, as she turned to stone, felt the same when she saw Sodom burning as I did leaving them behind and failing my sister Faigy.”

  * They took her.

  CHAPTER 31

  Nel stayed on the couch that night, afraid to be far from Jakob in his new makeshift bedroom. She heard him sleeping fitfully and attributed it to the hours he’d spent telling her everything. She could hardly sleep either, visions of her grandparents, aunts, and uncle she’d never met, their faces gray and solemn like the old portraits of shtetl Jews she’d seen throughout her research.

  By morning, Jakob had developed a high fever. He was more than his usual confused too. She was tempted to call David or Mattie or both of them and take her dad straight to the hospital emergency room, but the visiting-nurse service was already scheduled to come that morning, so she waited to see what they would recommend.

  “We’ll take some blood and a urine sample and see if he’s got an infection. In the meantime, let him rest.”

  The kind nurse’s calm words didn’t reassure Nel, who flipped nervously through Catherine’s old magazines and tried to busy herself dusting the first floor so Jakob wasn’t left alone. She tried to do a little work on her jewelry, but any creativity she might’ve had that day was now doused with worry over her dad. Thankfully, she’d been able to assuage Sandra and her buyers by completing orders and commissioned work so that she was, as she’d hoped to be, ahead of schedule.

  The phone rang and it was David.

  “How was your night?”

  “Not the greatest. I hardly slept worrying about him having another night terror, trying to get up by himself, or both. And now the nurse thinks he might have a urinary tract infection—she called it a ‘UTI’—which would make sense. The doctors at the hospital told me how those can really mess with elderly patients, making them all confused, sometimes being the underlying reason for a fall. Whatever it is, Dad’s snowed. He hasn’t been up yet, and I’m not sure that he will be today.”

  “I’m sorry. Can I bring you some burgers or something for lunch? Maybe your dad would take a milkshake? I’m working at the old Thompson place just down the road today, so I’m close. I’m finishing up their kitchen cabinets this morning, and was planning on bringing some things by your house today to get things ready to start on the roof.”

  “That’d be amazing—burgers and shakes for both of us.”

  “And a large cup of coffee?” Nel heard the smile in his voice on the other end of the line.

  “Extra large, if they have that,” she replied.

  Frustrated with trying to calm her nerves with busyness, she settled herself onto the couch and flipped on soap operas and drifted off to sleep. She awoke to the side door creaking open and David carrying his red toolbox and a nail gun with one arm and lugging an air compressor behind him with the other. “Hey there, beautiful—”

  “Shhhh—Dad’s sleeping.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he whispered, setting his tools down and kissing her on the cheek. “Looks like someone else might’ve been napping too. I’ll be right back with the burgers.”

  God bless him, Nel thought, hungry for lunch but more relieved to have someone with her when her dad was feeling poorly. Nel sat up, ran her hands through her hair, and tried to smooth her rumpled clothes before he came back. She blew the dreads falling over her eyes away from her face in exasperation.

  “Let’s eat out back,” she said when he returned with the bags of food and the carrier full of shakes and coffee. “We can talk out there without disturbing Dad.”

  They settled on the back deck, and Nel brought the baby monitor with her. She’d picked up a set last-minute so she could hear Jakob if she was busy in another room, and she was glad she’d thought to do so. The similarities between caring for her father and what her friends described to her about caring for a young child were striking.

  “Lumber company’s delivering the roofing materials this afternoon,” David said through a mouthful of cheeseburger.

  Nel played with the straw in her milkshake.

  “Aren’t you gonna eat?” David asked.

  “I will … It was a rough morning, is all. Dad woke up confused. Incontinent, which isn’t unusual. But he was talking out of his head like when he was at the hospital with his broken hip. That’s how I knew something was wrong besides his normal, everyday loopiness.” Nel hesitated, searching for the right words to tell David the worst. “He tried to hit me. He just got so agitated when I was cleaning him up.”

  “He tried to hit you?”

  “Yeah. I ducked.” She looked at David sheepishly and grinned. It wasn’t funny, but if she didn’t try to make a little light of it, she’d burst into tears.

  The phone rang and Nel jumped. “Maybe it’s the doctor’s office with the lab results.” She ran inside to grab the call.

  “You look relieved,” David said to her when she came back several minutes later.

  “I am. He has a bladder infection, but it’s not too bad yet. They’re calling in an antibiotic. They said he should be back to himself in a couple days.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “I’m afraid I pushed him too hard yesterday.” She told David the major portions of the story Jakob had told her the day before.

  David looked stunned. “That’s incredible. And he’s carried that around with him his whole life? He never told anyone? Not even your mom?”

  “No. All she knew was that he and Peter were from Ukraine and that the Stewarts had adopted them. No wonder she’d been determined to figure out what his story was, if she’d been living through his nightmares and all that. Maybe since Ukraine gained their independence in 1991, she thought she’d finally have the chance to know the whole story, where he’d come from and such.”

  “Makes sense.” David stuffed their sandwich wrappers back into the bag. “But you haven’t heard anything back from what you sent to Ukraine?”

  “No. I doubt I will. It was a long shot. But now that he’s told me the story, I don’t feel like I need to know more. Not really.”

  Nel ran to the drugstore while David stayed with Jakob and waited for the lumber. After she returned and gave Jakob his first dose of antibiotics, he drank part of his milkshake. Then he fell asleep again.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” David said when Nel came back to the living room. “I called Mattie to see if
she’ll sit with him a bit so we can take a walk.”

  “Mind? That sounds like heaven. How do you know what I need before I know myself?”

  He shrugged, and she threw her arms around him and kissed him.

  “Thank you, David, for everything you’ve done for me since I’ve been home, since all of this.”

  Mattie arrived, and Nel and David walked down to the lake, which was unusually placid. A group of blue herons flew overhead, so low they could hear the sound of their wings beating against the wind.

  Nel pulled the rough piece of tourmaline out of her pocket, the same stone she and Jakob had been talking about the day before. She sighed, holding it up to the sun hovering over the lake. “The stone that can’t decide what it wants to be.”

  David looked at her quizzically.

  “That’s what I call it. It’s tourmaline. Turns to a solid color when it’s heated up. Otherwise, it stays two-toned like this.” She turned the stone between her fingers. “Ever since I’ve come home, I feel like that. Like God’s heating me up. Trying to teach me who He wants me to be.”

  David picked up a flat beach stone and flung it across the smooth water, where it skipped half a dozen times. “He has a knack for that, that’s for sure.”

  Nel glanced at him and wondered what he was getting at.

  “Have you noticed anything curious about me since we’ve met?” David asked. “Or re-met, I should say?”

  “Hmmm. Let me think. You talk with a lot of clichés. You love takeout. You’re a fantastic kisser, which makes me mad all over again that I never got to find that out at the senior prom.”

  “You really bury the hatchet, don’t you?”

  “The handle could come in useful. Like today.”

  They laughed, and then David got serious again. “No, really. Think about it. What’s missing?”

  “Seriously? I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

  “Your dad finally told his story. I guess I ought to tell you mine.”

  “David, you don’t have to …”

  He stopped, turned to her, and brushed her windblown hair away from her face as the sun gleamed down on it. “I want to. Maybe I need to. There was a reason I left Florida. I lost my wife. Lost everything … I killed a girl.”

  Nel stepped back instinctively. “What?”

  “Not on purpose. But it was my fault. I started drinking in high school. All those bonfires we used to sneak off to? Turned into a big problem for me. Got worse in college. But everybody drank back then, so my fiancée didn’t think twice about marrying me. Turns out she should have.”

  “What happened?”

  “She couldn’t handle my drinking. Especially when I’d start up about noon every day.”

  “No, I get that—you were an alcoholic. I mean what happened to the girl?”

  “First of all, I am an alcoholic. Always will be.”

  “Okay, you are an alcoholic.”

  “I was driving drunk along the ocean-side road during the time when all the college kids come down for spring break. I’d already racked up three, maybe four DUIs.” He hesitated. “Sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky. I didn’t even see her and her friends crossing the road. It was the middle of the afternoon. They were heading to the beach, a whole group of them. She was the last one to cross, and I barreled right over her. She died instantly.”

  “Oh, David.”

  “By that time, my marriage was over except for the paperwork. The judge who sent me to prison helped finalize the divorce for her the same day.”

  “How much time did you serve?”

  “I was sentenced to fifteen years. Vehicular homicide. Got out in seven and served the rest on probation. Sobered up when I was in prison through an in-house AA program. Isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of that girl and her family.”

  Nel watched his eyes fill with tears as he looked out at the horizon.

  “Figured God’d be done with me then. I had nothing in that concrete cell, or out of it, for that matter. Folks came in from prison ministries and tried to tell us we were forgiven and how much God loved us, and I couldn’t believe them.” He held his hand out toward her. “Can I see that tourmaline?”

  “Sure.”

  He held up the lucent stone and peered at the different layers of color. “I can’t tell you for sure when God started changing me. Maybe the day I killed that girl. Maybe in prison. Maybe before all that, but I was too drunk to pay attention. But He did. I was all mixed up like this stone too. But He changed me. Still is. I tried running from Him. Over and over again, I ran and ignored His voice. But He kept heating me up. Bringing people or a scripture or a piece of nature into my life unexpectedly, and I knew it was Him, talking to me and chasing me. I still carry a lot of shame. But at least I know I can live a better life with His help.”

  “Wow.” Nel stared at him, disbelieving.

  “Yeah.” David hung his head and watched the waves lap onto the shore. “You deserved to know.”

  The squeak of hydraulic truck brakes, followed by the repetitive beep of a truck backing up, caught their attention.

  “Sounds like the lumber’s here,” said Nel. “We better get back up to the house.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Jakob’s infection cleared, and soon he was back to a relatively stable routine again, even cooking eggs for breakfast now and then. On this particular morning, Mattie had brought a coffee cake for breakfast and they sat in the living room watching the morning news together while Nel ran some errands. A sharp pain had been nagging Jakob in the back of his head, and it kept him from sipping on the cup of Nel’s mud-strength coffee that Mattie had poured and set on the end table beside him. He waited for the pain to pass, but soon blackness covered the entire field of vision of his right eye. He tried to dismiss the pain by focusing his still-working left eye on the tree limbs swaying outside the living-room picture window. Squirrels chattered, no doubt fighting over the corncobs and seeds that Nel had kept replenishing in the feeders. Sunlight pressed through the edges of the shutters, and Jakob’s toes and legs felt cold and stiff, even though it was late spring. Catherine had always kept blankets on the arms of every chair and couch, but even with a couple of those thrown over his lap and a pair of wool socks on his feet, he didn’t feel warm.

  “Aren’t you going to drink your coffee?” Mattie said offhandedly as she flipped through a catalog.

  “I’m letting it cool a bit,” he said, hoisting himself up out of his recliner and heading toward the bathroom. “Excuse me a moment.”

  Jakob hadn’t told anyone about the changes in his vision. It wasn’t like he’d never had the strange eye spells before—he’d had them lots of times. Even before he broke his hip. But it was only one eye at a time, and they always passed as this one finally did too. Still, a chill he hadn’t felt before crept deep within his limbs as he fumbled for his walker and trekked to the bathroom even slower than his usual slow.

  “At least I kept my pants dry,” he mumbled to himself after dropping his drawers to the floor. He grabbed onto the newly installed steel bar on the wall as he lowered himself onto the commode. David’s additions and renovations pleased him, and he was truly grateful Nel had been there to orchestrate all the updates to the home. He and Catherine had always gotten by on what they had and didn’t believe in fixing anything unless it was broke, but Jakob fully admitted the work needed to be done if he was to live out the rest of his days at home. He hadn’t realized how neglected the place had become until he saw it fixed like new again.

  When he was finished, Jakob let the water run in the sink until it steamed, then splashed his face with it, most of it ending up on his shirt and the counter and floor. He was still weak from the infection, and every bend of every limb felt clumsy. He debated whether or not he should try to shave, since he hadn’t for several days, and decided he would. Dark age spots on
his saggy cheeks and hands reflected back at him as he lathered up his shaving brush.

  Fresh-shaven, he headed back to the couch, but before he could sit down, Mattie stopped him.

  “This is the day the Lord has made. Might as well rejoice and be glad in it, eh?”

  “Humpf.”

  “I’ll get your pills out. Then let’s go for a short walk, shall we? Grab the paper, maybe walk down the street a bit. It’s still nice and cool outside. Besides, who can nap with all the racket of the trim and roof work going on?” David had hired a couple of helpers, and the roof renovation was well underway.

  Though Jakob’s vision was back to normal, the back of his head still throbbed. He considered asking to skip the walk, but maybe the fresh air was exactly what his weak arms and wobbly knees needed. If nothing else, surely being outside would raise his spirits. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t be grumpy with me,” Mattie said playfully.

  “Sorry. I have a bit of a headache.”

  “The fresh air should help that too.”

  Mattie was right. The sun massaged his joints and warmed his cold hands. As they neared the mailbox, a young boy on a bicycle swerved Jakob’s way down the sidewalk. Usually Jakob ignored kids, figuring they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with an old geezer, or fearing he’d frighten them as he had unintentionally on more than one occasion. But he noticed this one, mostly because he headed straight for him. The boy’s father jogged alongside him in the grass, arm outstretched, ready to grab the seat if the boy leaned too far one way or another, separating from him only to avoid a large oak tree in the grass between the sidewalk and the street. This momentary separation, unfortunately, allowed just enough time for the boy, dressed in a bright-yellow T-shirt with a dump truck on the front and plaid shorts, to topple sideways to the ground. With a head full of dark curls, the boy sat in a crumpled ball for a stunned moment. But as soon as the blood oozed from his right knee and the palms of his hands, he let out an ear-piercing wail.