Come, My Little Angel

by Diane Noble

  The three friends grinned at each other, and Daisy thought her heart would soar. “Yes, sir, they do,” she said. “And our pas said they’ll help build it with the lumber this money will buy.”

  Mister Ferguson’s mouth was still hanging open.

  “It will have a steeple,” Daisy said. “And a little rock-lined garden out front.”

  “We’ll have Sunday school picnics in the summer,” Cady added. “And Bible drills.”

  “And choir practice every Wednesday night,” Wren said. “And maybe someday a piano and an organ.”

  Mister Ferguson was still peering at them through the wire-rimmed spectacles. “Well, now. Wonders never cease,” he finally said. He kept shaking his head as he wrote more words and numbers on the paper. When he was finished, he pushed the paper toward them. “You’ll need to sign your names where the X is. All three of you. Then underneath that, Miss James, you may write ‘Red Bud Church in the Pines.’ ”

  After they handed over the tins, he took off his visor and solemnly shook hands with them. “And ladies, with this big deposit, you’re entitled to a candy stick anytime you stop in to visit your money.” He laughed again and handed them each a stick of tangy-sweet horehound candy.

  They thanked him solemnly as he placed the tins of quarters behind the counter, explaining that they would be safely in the vault within minutes. “One more thing,” he said just as they reached the door. “Tell your fathers anytime they need someone to help pound nails on your new church, I’m their man.”

  As rehearsals continued, each day seemed to contain more wonder than the day before. Daisy could scarce contain her excitement. Her pa and brothers helped build the stage near the clapboard shed by the tavern. It was finished just four days before the play. Behind it, nestled among the pines, were rows and rows of benches, enough for five hundred people, already set in place. The children’s fathers had taken turns after work leveling the ground so the benches would sit steady.

  And the shed itself had undergone a transformation of its own.

  Three days before the play, Toby and his father helped Mister Taggart remove the shelves that had once held the whiskey bottles. Mister Taggart brought a small cradle that he had made in his woodshop at home, and Daisy helped fill it with hay from an old livery near the outskirts of town. The shed looked more like the place Christ was born and held a sweet scent like fresh mown grass. The smell of hay was so pleasant that Cady and Wren had gone back to the livery for more to scatter on the floor.

  That same afternoon Mister McGowan and Mister Taggart used crowbars to pull the boards off one side of the shed so the audience could see inside.

  Toby stood back to admire the look of it. “You would n-never know it w-was once used for w-whiskey.”

  “A right fine idea.” Mister McGowan grinned proudly as he came back to admire it himself. “Better than what it was used for previous.”

  “It’ll be a fine place for baby Jesus,” Daisy said softly. “There’s just enough room for Brooke and Grover and the cutout animals.” Brooke had insisted on playing Mary, and Grover reluctantly agreed to be Joseph when none of the other boys would take the part because of bossy, stuck-up Brooke Knight-Smyth.

  Toby nodded. “The three w-wise men will have to stay outside.” He grinned. “W-which they might have had to do anyway, seein’ as they were on camels and such.” His stutter had almost disappeared during the rehearsals, but Daisy worried that his nervousness during the real performance might make it return.

  The children were so used to it now that they didn’t pay it much mind any more. But the audience might be a different matter. Daisy bit her lip. What if they laughed at Toby? It would not hurt for him to practice even harder. “Want me to help you rehearse your lines?”

  He blushed and nodded.

  “You mind if I stay and watch?” Toby’s father asked. It would be the first time he had seen his son play the part.

  Toby turned plum and looked at his shoes. Daisy sighed. If he was this shy in front of his own father, what would he do in front of the whole town?

  “Okay—” Daisy smiled at Toby—“let’s start where you first get to heaven.” She inclined her head to the newly finished pine stage. “Do you want to be the first to try it out?”

  By now Mister Taggart had come out of the shed, where he had been working on placing the manger, and stood beside Daisy, brushing hay dust from his hands. And Cady and Wren had returned with the handwagon filled with two bales of hay.

  They halted the wagon near Daisy and plunked down on a hay bale to watch.

  “Try it out, Toby,” Mister Taggart said. “Let us know how it feels to be on a real stage. Don’t forget to speak up. The people in the last row need to hear you loud and clear.”

  Toby nodded, and carefully holding his arm, which was freshly out of its plaster cast, climbed the stairs with his awkward, skinny-legged tread. He turned a small circle smack-dab in the middle of the stage, then halted to grin proudly at his father, then Mister Taggart, and finally, at Daisy.

  Gulping a deep breath, he stared at his shoes for a long time. But when he lifted his face, his gaze was fixed on the benches. His lips moved slowly as if he were counting the benches in his mind.

  “F-five h-hunderd p-peop-ple?” he squeaked. “There’s more’n f-five hunderd f-folks gonna be h-here?”

  “Take a deep breath, Toby,” Mister Taggart said calmly. The music teacher took four strides toward the stage. “Remember what I said. Breathe in and count to ten. Think about speaking to a metronome, just like we practiced.”

  Toby nodded, his bottom lip sticking out as if ready to cry, his gaze fixed on the empty benches. A look of terror glazed his big gray eyes. He took a step backward and tripped over his shoelace.

  Cady and Wren looked stricken and glanced at Daisy. She wanted to cry for the boy on the stage. Instead, she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer.

  “One, two, one, two,” Mister Taggart said in a rhythmic beat. “Breathe and count, Toby. Breathe and count.”

  Toby ripped his gaze away from the benches and nodded to Mister Taggart. “O-one, t-two, o-one, t-t-t-two.” Tears filled his eyes. “I-I c-can’t d-do it, after all.” His face crumpled, and he flung himself from the stage and raced up the incline to the road.

  At the top, he stopped and yelled back, “B-besides—” he sounded like his heart might break—“b-besides, l-look over y-yonder. There’s a nor’wester c-comin’. It’s c-comin’, and s-soon!”

  A storm? It couldn’t be!

  The bright afternoon sun hung well above the horizon, and shadows fell crisp from the pines. A typical Indian summer day. Just like Daisy and her friends had prayed for.

  Shading her eyes, Daisy squinted to the northwest. Truly, a bank of clouds was building, and the sky was turning a telltale hazy blue-gray. She turned at Mister Taggart, hoping for reassurance that a storm was not expected.

  But Mister Taggart had already taken at least three loping strides up the hillside, joining Mister McGowan in pursuit of the star angel.

  THE RAIN BEGAN that night, light sprinkles followed by winds strong enough to bend the oak branches double. Pa said it was going to be a big one, and Daisy’s heart froze as solid as the hailstorm he said would surely follow.

  By the time the kitchen clock struck eleven o’clock, gusts of wind and hail pelted the window beside her bed. She shivered and turned over, burrowing under her blankets, praying the storm would last only the night. One day more at the most, she reminded God before drifting to sleep, but only if necessary. Please, though, make it stop in time for our drama show.

  But when she padded to the window the following morning, her heart fell as she lifted the calico curtain and peeked through. The snow was as deep as her Pa’s ankle and still falling in big lacy flakes.

  Her sisters hopped out of bed and raced to stand beside her, cheering at the first snowy day of winter, chattering about the snowfall just in time for Christmas, and speaking of making snow-cream with eg
gs and sugar and milk and Ma’s precious vanilla drops. Until they saw Daisy’s face.

  Clover clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh no!” She blinked at the blanket of snow, then turned again to Daisy. “Maybe the sun will come out this afternoon. It doesn’t look too deep to melt in a single day.” She peered nervously through the window again. “Honest.”

  Violet put her hand in Daisy’s and pressed her nose against the cold glass, making two little spots of fog with her nostrils. “Why can’t we have it in the thnow? Everybody could dreth warm. It’ll be fun.”

  Rosie cooed and gurgled from her cradle in the corner, examining her wiggling fingers. Daisy crossed the room and lifted the baby into her arms. She changed Rosie’s diaper, and bouncing the chortling baby on her arm, followed Violet and Clover to the kitchen. They were talking about how they could make snow angels during Daisy’s drama show if the storm did not die down.

  Alfred and Grover were already seated at the big oak table with their pa, and Ma stood at the stove stirring popover batter into tins.

  Pa smiled at the three girls as Daisy dropped the baby into the high chair.

  “The wortht thing ’bout thnow is goin’ to the necessary,” Violet announced as she sped through the kitchen. She struggled into her boots, hopping and twisting in her hurry. “I gotta go. Real bad!” She snatched her coat and flung open the door. The chilly air barreled through the kitchen.

  “I’m going first!” Clover pulled on her coat and tried to push her sister out of the doorway.

  “Girls!” Ma warned, then laughed as the little ones raced outside, squealing and throwing snow on their way to the privy.

  Daisy settled into a chair with a heavy sigh. Pa reached for her hand. “It won’t last forever, Daisy girl.”

  “The sun can melt this much in nothing flat.” Alfred’s tone was gentle, just like the night of the tunnel fire. “You’ll see.”

  “There’s only two days left,” Daisy said. “That’s not enough time for it to melt.” And freezing nights always came after a snowstorm. Everyone knew that. After a nor’wester even the fat icicles that hung to the ground stayed frozen for weeks.

  She tried to keep her lip from trembling and stared through the window beyond her brothers.

  “I say we go look for our Christmas tree today,” Grover said, sounding too cheerful. “We’ll go on snowshoes.”

  She shook her head, and when she spoke her voice was small. “Pa’s always said not to go in the woods when it’s snowin’ this hard.” She glanced at her pa who confirmed it with a sorry nod.

  Her shoulders slumped. Only the sun peeking from behind the clouds, shining down on Red Bud, bright and beautiful, would make her feel better.

  It snowed off and on that day and again the following night. The next morning, the day before the drama show, Daisy ran to the window. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, scattering dancing lights on the icicles and across the snow.

  The deep snow! She could tell by where it came on the pickets. It was as high as Violet’s knees. The beautiful new stage and all the benches were likely large lumps of snow by now.

  With a heavy sigh, she crawled back in her bed and covered her head with her blankets. She stayed there all morning, telling her Ma she felt too poorly to rise.

  Normally, Ma would not allow such behavior, but everyone in the household seemed to know how much her heart hurt and made allowances. Even her ma.

  Just past noon Abigail donned her woolen bonnet and worn coat and pulled on an old pair of Orin’s scarred and scuffed boots. She made do with the large size by wearing three pairs of thick stockings so her heels would not slip.

  She’d figured where she might find Percival Taggart, and sure enough, he was there. She heard the music from his piano long before stepping foot on the stoop of the clapboard music room.

  His music made her think back to how things had changed since she first burst into his music class, indignant and angry about what the town drunkard was teaching Daisy about things unseen.

  And now she was coming for his help.

  She raised her hand and rapped a soft sound that seemed nearly lost in the wrap of thick mitten wool and the quiet of the snow all around her.

  The music stopped, followed by the scrape of the piano bench scooting backward. A moment later, Mister Taggart opened the door.

  He did not appear surprised to find her on his doorstep. “Come in, come in.” He smiled, a look that utterly transformed his haggard face. He seemed at greater peace somehow than she had ever noticed before.

  She stepped through the doorway. He helped her from her coat, and, while pulling off her mittens, she slipped into one of the children’s chairs.

  He sat across from her on the piano bench, leaning his elbows on his knees. “How is Daisy taking this?”

  “She’s sick at heart. So much so she’s taken to bed.” She looked at the floor for a moment, sick at heart herself on behalf of the child, then raised her eyes to his again. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

  He looked worried as he nodded slowly. “Her hopes and dreams have been high—more than any of the other children’s.”

  She felt ashamed. “It seems the more I tried to douse her dreams, the more determined she was to dream them.” Abigail stood and walked to the paned window, cleared the moisture from a section of glass and looked out at the snow sparkling in the sunlight. “Somehow the seeds of hope were planted in her heart long ago. No matter what I did—thinking I was protecting her—still that hope grew.” She turned to face him. “Now I would give anything to see it again.”

  “But you’re afraid it’s gone now?”

  Abigail nodded. “If you could have seen her face this morning. A foot of snow smothered her last hope for tomorrow. It was like something died in her eyes.”

  “You must tell her the truth,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She said that the reason she wants the town to build this church is so she’ll hear you sing again. She remembers a little church with a steeple from somewhere in her early childhood. She also remembers how you stopped singing and laughing and dancing with her—soon after you lost the baby.”

  Abigail stared at him without blinking. “That’s what started all this?”

  “Yes.” His voice was gentle, understanding. “You must tell her that the real dream in her heart is still alive. You must tell her the music hasn’t died.”

  “Daisy…?”

  Abigail tapped on her daughter’s doorjamb. All she could see was a tumbled lump of blankets on the child’s bed. “Daisy?” She settled onto the edge of the trundle bed, reached for Daisy’s shoulder, and squeezed it. Folding back the tattered edge of the bedding, she peered into her daughter’s solemn face.

  “I must tell you some things,” she said. “I reckon I’d like it if you’d sit up so we can talk.”

  Daisy sat up and leaned back against her pillow. “But I still feel poorly.”

  “I understand that. But you must listen to what I say.”

  Daisy nodded slowly.

  “All along I’ve told you that I wanted to protect your heart. That by not dreaming big dreams you’ll somehow not ever get your heart stomped on from disappointment.”

  Daisy’s eyes were sorrowful with understanding. Disappointment had already taken hold.

  “But I’ve come to a new conclusion, child.”

  The little girl did not so much as ask what it was, and it near on broke Abigail’s heart that she did not. She reached for Daisy’s little hand, hoping it was not too late. “You see, honey, we must dream our dreams. We must keep trying to make them happen. No matter what, we must. Because even when those dreams don’t come true, it’s all right.”

  Daisy frowned, keeping her gaze locked on her mother’s face.

  Abigail squeezed her fingers, and dropped her voice as she continued. “You must keep on trying.” She leaned forward earnestly, wanting Daisy’s face to light up again with hope. “You must keep trying
, child, because someday those dreams will come true. It may not be when you thought they would—God’s timing is like that. Sometimes sorrowful and sad things happen to us.

  “But when they do, He’ll be with us. Just like Mister Taggart prayed the night of the tunnel fire. And there’s something else I found about dreams and hope.”

  Daisy leaned forward, a spark of interest showing in her eyes.

  Abigail smiled. “It’s maybe the most important thing of all.”

  “What is it?” Daisy finally asked.

  “When those impossible dreams finally do come true, the hole in your heart carved by sorrow will cause you to fill with more joy than you can imagine.”

  Daisy tilted her head. “Really?”

  “And there’s one more thing—something I’ve always told you was true.”

  “That I can’t lollygag in bed all day?” There was a giggle in her voice.

  Abigail laughed softly. “Well now. Besides that.” She reached for Daisy’s long braid, unraveled the plaits, and finger-combed through the silken strands. “I’ve always said God helps those who helps themselves.”

  Daisy let out a giggling sigh and nodded.

  “I say, you’d better get up to the place you’re planning to put on your drama show and get to work.”

  Daisy sat up like a shot. “Wha—?”

  “The others have gotten a head start. Pa’s there with Alfred and Grover, all with their snow shovels. Even Clover and Violet are bundled up and ready to go with you to help.”

  “They think we can clear the place?”

  “Pa and Mister Taggart are trying to rig up some barrels full of heated rocks.” She shook her head. “I’m not certain how they can get enough together for five hundred people.” She shrugged and laughed again. “But you know menfolk. They seem to like to bring about the impossible.”

  Her daughter’s eyes were so filled with wonder that it near took Abigail’s breath away. She brushed a few strands of hair from Daisy’s forehead. “And while we’re going around, getting ourselves and Rosie bundled, I’d like you to do something for me.”