One Shining Moment

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Maybe the doctor can do something, Pa.”

  Shaking his head, Will answered, “No, it’s my time. And I’m ready, Lylah.” He reached out and touched her cheek, marveling at the smoothness of it. “You look like your ma—didn’t remember how much. But I’ve been thinking of her a lot, laying here . . .”

  Lylah sat beside him for half an hour as he talked, then when he dropped off to sleep, she rose and went back into the crowded living room. “He’s asleep,” she said. “What does Dr. Smith say?”

  “He could go anytime,” Pete said. “Owen just called from Fort Smith. He’ll be here pretty soon.”

  Agnes appeared at the door, saying, “We’ve got food. The neighbors have been bringing it in till there’s no place to put it.”

  “We’ve got to eat,” Lenora said. She wheeled her chair out of the living room, and soon they were all gathered around the table. It was Christie who said gently, “Agnes, come and sit down. You’ve been working all day.”

  Her invitation brought a flush to Agnes’s face. Memories of how badly she’d treated this young woman flooded her, and she stumbled, “No . . . I don’t . . . I don’t think I should.”

  But Christie rose and went to Agnes. She pressed her into a chair, saying, “Sit down and eat something. We’ve got to take care of each other in this.”

  Suddenly Agnes began to weep, and Logan, who sat beside her, patted her shoulder. “Don’t feel bad, Agnes.” He had suffered at this woman’s hands as had all the rest of them, but now kindness came to his warm brown eyes. “Families have to stick together.”

  After that, Agnes managed to control herself, and the family ate what they could. Afterward, the long wait began, that time when minutes seem to drag by on leaden feet. There was nothing to do, and talk seemed foolish and awkward somehow. From time to time one of them would go sit beside the dying man, but the others wandered around the yard, talking in small groups and trying to entertain the children.

  “Look at the mob of kids,” Logan said to Pete. “We got enough for a baseball team!”

  And indeed there were enough—and more—for that. Logan’s four—Helen, Ray, Violet, and the youngest, Clinton; Pete’s son and daughter, Stephen and Mona; Gavin’s brand-new son Phillip; and Owen’s three, William Lee, Woody, and Wendy.

  Pete grinned and shook his head. “Looks like the crops of Stuarts have been right good, don’t it, now?” He asked suddenly, “Logan, how you making out—on your farm, I mean?”

  “Ain’t missed a meal—but we had to postpone a few, I reckon. How about you, Pete? Workin’ in the oil fields, that’s rough, ain’t it?”

  “Pretty rough,” Pete admitted. “Don’t know as I’d want to do it the rest of my life.” He drew a barlow knife from his pocket, picked up a piece of cedar from the ground, and began to shave long, curling shavings from it. “Guess it’s a good thing Amos and Owen and Lylah are doing good. You and me sure ain’t set no records.”

  Logan had no answer, for he’d thought the same thing. The two men stood there talking. The children played, their voices shrill on the afternoon air. “Glad Owen got here,” Logan nodded. “Pa sure was anxious—” He broke off, for Amos had appeared, calling urgently, “Logan, you and Pete—hurry!”

  Both men hurried toward the house, and Amos said, “He’s going—come on!”

  They all crowded into the small room, and when Will opened his eyes and looked around, he whispered, “All here? All the children?”

  “We’re all here, Pa,” Lylah whispered. Her face was pale and her lips trembled. “We love you, Pa!”

  Will’s eyes closed and they thought he was gone, but then he opened them and his lips moved slightly. “I’ll see your ma . . . tell her about all . . . of you . . .” His eyes moved from face to face, and he called their names—“Christie . . . Lenora . . . and Lylah . . . all my . . . good girls!” He looked at the tall sons, whispering, “Amos—my first boy . . . and Owen, my preacher boy . . . Pete and Gavin and you, Logan . . . what good sons—God blessed me and your ma!”

  He heard the sound of weeping and looked up to Agnes. “Don’t cry,” he murmured. He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it, which caused her to turn and leave the room.

  “Take care of her.” Will nodded. He lay still, and silence filled the room. He lay that way for perhaps two minutes, then his chest lifted and his eyes flew open. He cried out in a stronger voice—“Marian!—” And then he smiled. It was a peaceful smile, and the lines of his face seemed to fade.

  He took one look around the room, at the beloved faces of his children. “I’ll wait . . . for you!” he whispered, and then his voice became so soft they barely heard it.

  “Lord Jesus—I’m coming . . .”

  And then he was gone. Lenora picked up the still hand, kissed it, then put it on his breast. “He’s gone,” she said, but though there were tears in her eyes, there was victory, too. “Gone to be with the Lord. One day we’ll see him again—him and Ma.”

  Don Satterfield preached the funeral, and it was a simple sermon. The church was filled to overflowing, neighbors coming from miles away.

  They buried their father in the ancient cemetery beside his first wife, Marian. The stone they put at the head of the grave gave his name and the dates of his life. And one verse was carved into the white granite—“The Dead in Christ Shall Rise First.”

  Afterward there was the usual time when no one knows what to do. The neighbors left, promising to return, and then the family was alone.

  It was Amos, the oldest, who did the necessary things. Calling them all together, he said, “Pa wanted Agnes to be taken care of.” He turned to Agnes, saying, “Do you want to try to hire a man to work the farm, Agnes?”

  “No, I can’t do that. I’ll move to town.”

  “I think that might be best. Here’s what I think. Pa left you some money from his insurance and half of the farm. The other half he left to the children. I’d like to see you come back and take over the place, Logan.”

  “Why—I’d like that, Amos!”

  “Fine. Now, we’ll pay you for your half of the farm in a lump sum, Agnes. Is that all right?”

  Agnes nodded, then said, “I . . . I wish I’d been different! I could’ve made things easier for him!”

  Finally the arrangements were made, and the children of Will Stuart sat together talking about their lives. “We’ll be pretty well scattered over the country,” Gavin said finally. “But I want us to come back to this place once a year—bring all the kids. Make a tradition of it.”

  “I like that idea,” Amos replied instantly. “I wanted to keep the old home place—and now with Logan here, we’ll always be able to bring our kids and grandkids here. Let’s promise each other that once a year we all come to Stone County, to this house.”

  Everyone vowed to return, and the next morning when they all left to go back to their homes and their lives, Owen said to Lylah, “I’ll see you sooner than next year. I’ve got a meeting in Los Angeles. Will you come?”

  Lylah nodded, then smiled. “I’ll come. I might even be one of those who hit the sawdust trail.”

  “I wish you would put God in your life, Lylah. It’s what I want—and what Pa wanted most of all.”

  “I . . . I have a friend now,” Lylah said, her face showing something that Owen hadn’t seen for a long time. “A man who knows God.” She hesitated, then smiled. “He’s become very important to me and Adam. I want you to meet him.”

  Owen lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll look forward to meeting him. Is he an actor?”

  “No!” Lylah said instantly. “He’s a writer.”

  Owen studied his sister’s face, which was glowing with a radiance that made her look younger. He saw in her a hope that he’d seen when she was a young girl but which had been in her only rarely in her later years.

  “Well,” he said quietly, a smile coming to his broad lips. “He must be something to make you light up like that!”

  “Oh, I just like him, Owen,” Lyl
ah said quickly. “And he’s been good for Adam.”

  “He’s been good for Lylah, too, I think.” Placing his good arm around her, he drew her close and whispered, “Don’t let him get away!”

  A GATHERING OF STUARTS

  Carl Thomas had been a successful tractor salesman, and he still retained some of the rural quality that had made that possible. He’d been able to sell a tractor to a farmer but had quickly learned how to sell thousands of them by organizing his own company. He was what some have called “country smart,” with little formal education but an enormous fund of native wit and a sense of timing.

  He’d been one of the first to see the potential of Thomas Edison’s invention, the kinetoscope. Edison did not actually invent the motion picture camera. Most of the credit for that should go to a French scientist named Etienne Jules Aarey. This pioneer laid the foundation for a British-born American photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, to develop a method employing a camera house for a battery of twelve electrically operated cameras and a specially marked fence. With this he was able to take a series of still photographs of a trotting horse that proved all four of its feet were off the ground at one phase of the trot. In 1879, he developed a machine called a zoopraxiscope that would project the images on a large-size screen.

  Edison was an inventor, an entertainer, and an entrepreneur. He laid claims to every device he could imagine and managed to produce most of these devices. And he contributed the one necessary element of motion picture photography—the perforation of the film strip at equidistant intervals so that the film would run smoothly past the lens.

  The practical—that is, the economic—end of all of this was the nickelodeon. These were machines that an individual could peer into to view a fifteen-minute film. Beginning in 1893, these devices spread all over the country, and the next step was the full-sized screen where an audience could collect. The vaudeville theaters were waiting. In 1905, the first neighborhood storefront theater in America was opened in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. The rest, as they say, is history.

  Carl Thomas was tired of selling tractors. He sold out, put his money into a studio, and began making films. He didn’t know much about such things, but neither did anyone else. It didn’t matter, for audiences were so enthralled that they would pay to see practically anything on the screen.

  He made a great deal of money—and by failing to keep up with new techniques, managed to lose most of it. However, he still owned equipment and had close ties with theater owners all over the country—and this was why Lylah was sitting in his office one morning.

  “Carl, I want you to help me make a film,” she’d said as soon as he’d greeted her warmly and asked her to sit down.

  Her request caught him off guard, and he stood staring at her. He was a short man, not over five feet, five inches tall, who always wore the finest and most fashionable suits. He had a thin mustache, a full head of black hair, and bulging eyes. He was rarely taken off guard, for he was a shrewd man.

  “Why, my dear Lylah, why in the world would we want to do that? Don’t you know how many men have lost their shirts trying to make pictures?”

  “Tell me, Carl,” Lylah said, leaning forward. “Tell me everything that can go wrong.” Then she sat back, and for the next hour the dapper producer outlined the pitfalls of the film business.

  When he had finished, he spread his small hands out saying earnestly, “So you see, my dear, it’s not what you might call a good, sound risk. Have nothing to do with it! I’m getting out, myself.”

  “Would you sell me your equipment—on credit?” she demanded at once. “And would you help make the film—and then help distribute it?”

  For two days the two were locked in a struggle, but finally Thomas said, “All right, Lylah! If you’re determined to lose everything you have, I’ll help you do it. But you’ll have to raise a great deal of money. The kind of picture you want to make will be expensive—and as much as I like you, my dear, I’m not going to go broke with you!”

  They had shaken hands on the deal, and Lylah left at once, determined to raise the money. For a week she visited banks and quickly discovered that they were not interested. “Why don’t you take up horse racing, Miss Stuart?” one of the loan officers asked her. “Compared to making movies, that’s a sound, solid, conservative business.”

  She arrived at Jesse’s house late one afternoon, and after greeting Adam with a hug, fell on the couch. She kicked off her shoes and put her head back on the couch. “Jesse, there’s no hope!” she moaned. “I’ve been to every bank in town, and they all just laugh at me!”

  Jesse sat down beside her and lifted her feet onto his lap. He began to massage one, asking sympathetically, “What do they really say?”

  “Oh, that feels good! Why, they say that I’ve got no track record, that they have a duty to their depositors, and that there’s no way the thing will ever find a backer.”

  Jesse remained silent, rubbing her arches for a few minutes. He looked out the window and saw Bonnie swinging Adam. The boy’s squeals of pleasure came to them, and he smiled. “Bonnie’s going to make a good wife—and mother. She dotes on Adam. And so do I.”

  Lylah opened her eyes and smiled despite her weariness. “You’ve been so good for him, Jesse.”

  For one moment Jesse gazed at her, then said abruptly, “I’d like to apply for a full-time job at it.”

  Lylah blinked in surprise. “Job? What kind of job?”

  “At being Adam’s dad.” He reached over and pulled her up into his arms, adding, “And I guess you go with the territory.” Then he kissed her, a long kiss that stirred her. He whispered, “I love you, Lylah. I want to marry you.”

  Lylah had known for weeks that she loved him. But now she drew back. “I’ve never told you about Adam’s father,” she said quietly. “He was Baron Manfred von Richthofen.”

  Jesse sat quietly holding her hand as she told of her mad affair with the German ace. Finally she ended by saying, “Some people still hate the Germans. I had to tell you.”

  Jesse kissed her hand, then said, “Adam’s father was a man of courage and honor. And if you loved him, Lylah, he must have had other good qualities. Do you love me? That’s the only question.”

  Lylah’s eyes brimmed with tears, and her throat was so full she could scarcely say, “Oh, yes, Jesse!”

  When Bonnie came inside with Adam, Jesse called her. She came at once to the two, and Jesse said, “How would you like a sister-in-law?”

  Bonnie’s eyes flew open, and then she released Adam and flew to hug them both. Later she told Jesse, “I knew you were going to marry her. I’m so glad!”

  She said the same thing to Jerry, who came to pick up another mail plane. He arrived unexpectedly, and he took her out for a long walk after supper. She was shy with him, and finally he said, “I’ve got something to tell you, Bonnie—”

  Bonnie’s heart sank. He’s going to marry that flier, that Cara Gilmore! She swallowed hard, then asked, “What is it, Jerry?”

  He stopped, saying, “Let’s sit down. It’s kind of a long story.” The two of them sat down, and he told her of his close call. She sat beside him, riveted by his story. Finally he said, “It was all up with me, Bonnie. No way out but to go down. Out of gas and no place to land.” He turned to her with an odd expression and looked at her heart-shaped face. “And then I remembered the last thing you said to me. Remember what it was?”

  “I . . . think I said I’d pray for you.”

  “That’s right—and I swear, Bonnie, as I was freezing and going down, I could see you—as clearly as I can right now!”

  “Jerry!”

  “And I could hear you saying ‘I’ll pray for you, Jerry!’”

  His hands took hers, and he whispered, “Bonnie, it was so real! And then I asked God to get me down safe—and right then a hole in the clouds opened—and there was a field.”

  “How wonderful!” Bonnie said, enthralled—and very aware of her hands in his. He was squeezing them so
hard they hurt, but she didn’t care. “I’m so glad!”

  Jerry suddenly leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re a fine girl, Bonnie Hart! I’ve got to find out more about God, and I’m counting on you to help me. Will you?”

  “I don’t know much, Jerry, but I know Jesus Christ is the only one who can save us!”

  “Tell me—how did you find him?”

  The two of them talked for a long time, and when they got back to the house, Jerry grinned. “I guess you and I are sort of related now.”

  “No, we’re not!”

  Jerry stared at her in surprise. “All I meant was, my aunt is marrying your brother, so that’s—”

  “We’re not related,” Bonnie said more firmly than necessary. “Don’t talk so silly!”

  The two of them had a fine time, but Jerry was aware that Lylah was tense. He finally asked her on the night before he left, “What’s wrong, Aunt Lylah?” He listened carefully as she told him her problem, how she wanted to make a film and couldn’t get backing.

  “Don’t worry about it, Jerry,” she said. “Some things we just can’t do.”

  “Well, I guess God can do about anything he wants to, can’t he?”

  Lylah stared at him. “You sound like Owen—and like your father, and Lenora.”

  “Pretty good company,” Jerry said with a grin. “You better get Bonnie to pray for you. She did a number on me . . .” He related his close brush with death, then nodded, “I’d say that young lady has a pretty close connection—and so has Jesse.”

  When he left the next morning, his parting words to Lylah were, “Don’t give up, Lylah.” Then he was gone, a smile on his lips.

  “A fine young man,” Jesse nodded. He looked at Bonnie with a mischievous light in his eyes. “Don’t you agree, Bonnie?”

  Bonnie gave him a steady look, then turned and walked away. Jesse smiled, then said, “Well, let’s go to some more banks. There’s got to be at least one willing to take a chance.”