The Final Farewell

by Patricia Wiles

  “It’s not the tuition,” Dad said. “And we are proud of you. You worked hard. You earned that scholarship.”

  “Then what?” I looked at my parents, and all at once it hit me. “Listen. If the Lord wanted me to serve a mission, He wouldn’t have dropped this scholarship in my lap.”

  “Just promise me you’ll pray about it before you make a decision,” Dad said. “That’s all I ask.”

  “Of course I will,” I answered. But there wasn’t any need to pray, not when I’d just had tens of thousands of dollars handed to me in a blue folder with a gold seal.

  Granddad liked to say that if you look a gift horse in the mouth long enough, you’re gonna find he has some bad teeth. But I couldn’t see anything bad about receiving a scholarship. The Lord wouldn’t give me something so wonderful only to take it all away. I was sure of it.

  Confident I’d made the right decision about my future, I concentrated on meeting my commitment to President Carter. I tripled up on my scripture study, and by the end of March I’d honed my speed-reading skills and finished the Book of Mormon. I went to church the last Sunday of the month ready to face my branch president.

  “I finished the reading assignment,” I said as I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “It took me a little longer than I expected, but I finished the Book of Mormon.”

  I could tell President Carter was pleased. “This was your first time to read it through, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you feel about it?”

  “I didn’t see any heavenly messengers when I finished. I didn’t have any big impressions. I just feel like the scriptures are right.”

  “May I ask a question?”

  “Sure.”

  President Carter looked me dead in the eye. “Did you read it to satisfy me or to satisfy yourself?”

  Darn. I had to be honest. “I promised you I’d read it, so I did.”

  I sensed he was trying hard to hide his disappointment. “That’s commendable. When you decide to read it for yourself, however, you’ll get more out of it.”

  I sighed and looked down at my hands.

  “I hear you’ve been going out with the elders quite a bit.”

  “Yeah. I’m going with them to visit Auntie Belle—I mean, Belle Mudd—almost every week.” I didn’t tell him I’d seen Dani there.

  “How do you feel like that’s going?”

  “Auntie Belle is really interested in the Church. But she’s bedridden and can’t attend. Her great-niece Rhanda isn’t too thrilled about our visits, but she lets us in because she knows it means so much to Auntie Belle.”

  “The elders think Auntie Belle wants to get baptized.”

  “I think so too,” I said. “She may be in her nineties and confined to her bed, but her mind is clear. I know she’s forgetful at times, but she comprehends what the elders are teaching.”

  “How do you feel about missionary work since you’ve been going out with the elders?”

  I figured this was as good a time as any to tell President Carter that I wasn’t going on a mission. But I had to do it in the right way. “It’s been a good experience to talk to Auntie Belle. I really care about her. I’m not an expert at sharing the gospel, so I’m glad I have this chance to go and watch the missionaries teach. I’m not going to be able to serve a mission, so helping out around here is the next best thing.”

  President Carter raised one eyebrow. “And why aren’t you going to be able to serve a mission?”

  “I got a full ride to Nelson–Barrett U.”

  President Carter smiled. “That’s very impressive. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I guess we’d better conclude this interview.” President Carter looked at his watch. “If you don’t mind, keep visiting Auntie Belle with the elders. They need your help.”

  I stood up, relieved that the interview was over. “I will.”

  President Carter walked to the door. He put his hand on the knob, but hesitated before he turned it. “Kevin, I know this scholarship is important to you. It would be to anybody. But before you make a final decision, I challenge you to pray about it. Alone. Go somewhere by yourself. Ask the Lord what His plan is for you. I know you’re thinking this scholarship is a stroke of good fortune. And it is. But sometimes even good fortune can be a temptation. If you feel the least bit uncertain about your decision, go to the Lord and ask. Will you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  President Carter opened the door. “Thanks for talking with me.” He shook my hand.

  “Anytime,” I said.

  That afternoon, I went with the elders to see Auntie Belle.

  Rhanda opened the door and let us in, but she didn’t speak. She walked back to the TV room, flopped down on the sofa, picked up the remote, and cranked up the volume.

  I followed the elders to Auntie Belle’s room.

  “Hello, boys. Hello, sweetie.” Auntie Belle reached for my hand as usual. “I’m ready for my lesson.” Then she lowered her voice. “First, though, I want to talk to you about baptism.”

  “We’re listening,” Elder McDonnell said.

  “There’s no way I can come to church. But I want to get baptized.”

  The elders exchanged glances. “You’ve prayed about this?”

  “I know it’s the right thing to do.” She motioned for us to come closer. “But I don’t know how Rhanda will react.”

  “We’ll discuss this with our mission president,” Elder Tolino said.

  Auntie Belle beamed. “All my life I’ve wondered what the Lord wanted from me. There were times when He tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. He had to wait until I was an old woman confined to her bed until I’d open my ears and my heart. But I’ve heard His voice, and now I know. I can’t wait to be clean.”

  Elder McDonnell said a prayer, and Elder Tolino gave a short lesson. I was impressed with Auntie Belle’s answers to their questions. She knew the Book of Mormon better than I did, and I’d just read it from cover to cover.

  After the lesson we played Yahtzee, and Auntie Belle won.

  “We have another appointment, Auntie. We have to go,” Elder McDonnell explained, standing up. “We’ll talk to our mission president. When we visit next week we’ll let you know what he says.”

  Auntie Belle pointed to the tissue box. I handed it to her. She took one out and dabbed her eyes. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your visits. Thank you for teaching me the gospel.” She looked longingly out the doorway to the TV room where Rhanda was sitting. “I wish my great-niece would open her heart to it. She’s a good girl. She’s had some tough times in her life. She wants everyone to think her heart’s a stone. But it’s not. It’s tender and loving. I see that when she helps me do things I can’t do for myself. She’s good.” Auntie Belle sniffed. “But the gospel would make her better.”

  “We’ll pray for her,” Elder McDonnell offered.

  “Of course we’ll pray for her,” Elder Tolino added.

  Auntie Belle’s eyes searched mine. “Will you pray for her, Kevin?”

  I didn’t like Rhanda. I didn’t want to pray for her. I would have been happy if I never saw her again.

  “Will you, sweetie?” Auntie Belle pleaded. She stretched her arms out, expecting a hug.

  I reciprocated. Sweetie echoed in my ears, and I felt as if I were hugging my grandma again. Even the scented powder she wore smelled just like Grandma’s.

  “I’ll pray for her, Auntie Belle. I promise.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Spring break wasn’t much of a break. Several elderly Armadillians decided mid-April was the best time to pass through the veil, so we had a funeral every day that week. Not only did we need a No Vacancy sign for the Paramount, but Marcy and Marshall decided they just had to have a deck built behind their house before the first of May. So Granddad broke out the power tools, Dad and Marshall hit up the local lumber yard, and I was snared into indentured servitude. I thought it would be a re
lief to go back to classes at Sherman County High.

  It wasn’t.

  Dani wasn’t at seminary the first Monday after the break. She didn’t come on Tuesday either.

  On Wednesday, I asked Sister Hooper if she’d heard from Dani.

  “Yes,” she said. “She dropped out.”

  Everything I’d eaten for breakfast that morning churned into a sour lump in my stomach. “But the year’s almost over. She’s so close to graduating. Couldn’t she stick it out a few more weeks?”

  Sister Hooper shrugged. “I know. Her mother tried to talk her into finishing the year, but she refused. She didn’t even care that they took away her driving privileges.”

  I searched for Dani at school, hoping to convince her to come back. Every time she saw me, she’d retreat in the opposite direction.

  When I got home, I called her house.

  “I’ll tell her you’re on the phone, but I’m not sure she’ll talk to you,” Sister Carter said. Then I heard her tell Dani I was calling.

  Silence.

  Sister Carter came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Kevin. She won’t take your call.”

  I hung up.

  The next time Dani spoke to me was the first of May, when they handed out graduation caps and gowns at school. Dani was with a group of her friends. They were laughing and trying on each other’s caps. I was standing in line to get mine. The room was crowded and it was hard to get around. As she and her friends made their way to the door, she bumped into me.

  “Excuse me,” she said as if I were a stranger.

  I picked up my cap and gown and left.

  Mid-May, my parents and I drove to the stake center on a sunny Sunday afternoon for seminary graduation. President Carter was there, and he walked with me to the stand when I got my diploma for completing all four years of seminary. I know he was glad I graduated, but there was no joy in his eyes when he congratulated me—only hurt. When the stake president, President Kensington, put the diploma in my hand, I never felt so alone in my life.

  A few days before high school graduation, I got a letter from Melonhead. He’d received his mission call. He was going to Greece. He wrote, “Believe it or not, my mom is excited. She wants me to get my picture taken in front of the Parthenon. So I’ll leave for the MTC in June. I’ll send you my address. Promise you’ll write me while I’m on the other side of the world! Let me know when you get your call, too.”

  Why did everyone want me to promise them something? President Carter wanted me to pray about going on a mission. Auntie Belle wanted me to pray for Rhanda. Now Melonhead wanted me to promise I’d write him while he was on his mission. I was tempted to tear up the letter.

  Instead, I wadded it up and threw it in the trash.

  What was wrong with me? I get a letter from one of my best friends and I throw it away because he asks me to write him while he’s on his mission?

  Nothing was right anymore. Everything was wrong. Dani had gone off the deep end. I missed Melonhead. I was avoiding the missionaries. We had two new elders. Elder Hall and Elder Peachey, and when they called me to go with them to visit Auntie Belle—who was still waiting to be baptized—I made up excuses every time. I hadn’t prayed for Rhanda. I didn’t want to. And I couldn’t face Auntie Belle, not after I’d promised I’d pray.

  I got my box of wildlife journals out of the closet. I found the first one—the one I’d started when we moved to the Paramount. My handwriting then was shaky and childlike.

  I thought I was so smart.

  I took my latest journal outside. I’d started it last summer, but I hadn’t even filled half of it. I sat down and began to sketch, hoping that would clear my mind. I focused on an ant. It was dragging a dead beetle back to its ant hill. The beetle was ten times bigger than the ant.

  It’s like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  But the ant looked as if he enjoyed lugging the beetle—like he was happy to be doing his job for the colony.

  I slammed the notebook shut and went back in the house. If I was going to have a pity party, I was going to have it by myself. I put Lima Bean on the couch and went in my room and shut the door.

  Life was so much simpler when I was a kid.

  I pulled out my old junk trunk and started going through the contents, hoping old memories would take my mind off my problems. There was the shoe box full of snakeskins I’d collected before we moved to the Paramount; at least a dozen brown envelopes full of genealogy information that Grandma had given me for safekeeping; the birth certificate for Kelsey, my older sister who died right after she was born. And a fishing worm in a plastic baggie.

  I took the worm out and rolled it around in my hands. I’d forgotten about the fishing worm Herb Conrad had given me.

  I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. I could almost smell the flowers at Cletus McCulley’s visitation. Cletus had been our first customer at the Paramount. His was the first dead body I’d ever seen. I’d been scared of dead bodies until then.

  I remembered how I stood at the door and greeted the church members as they came for the visitation. I had no idea that they would become my church family.

  I remembered the laughter coming from the old men sitting at the back of the funeral chapel. They were sharing some of Cletus’s most famous fish stories. And I remembered the man who laughed the loudest and the most—Herb Conrad, Cletus’s best fishing buddy.

  When Herb Conrad gave me that worm, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I carried it in my pocket every day of that first tough year at the Paramount—the year I met Dani; the year I learned about Kelsey and that my parents were Mormons; the year Chuck Stiller tortured me at school.

  The whole business with Chuck Stiller seemed so childish now, how I’d been so angry at him and how he wanted to beat me up all the time. I could never be angry at him again—not after what happened the day of his brother’s funeral—when his dad showed up drunk, and I caught him beating Chuck to a pulp behind the hearse garage.

  If I hadn’t come along to help him, and if Dad hadn’t showed up to help us—I shuddered. Chuck would have died. I was sure of that. And Mr. Stiller—in his drunken rage—would have turned his fists on me next. I was sure of that too.

  I wondered what had happened to Chuck since then. I knew he’d gone to live with his aunt and uncle in Chicago. I never got the chance to let him know I had no hard feelings or that I understood why he acted out. My head ached with guilt as I recalled the mean things I’d said to him—and about him—in seventh grade.

  I held the worm by the ends and stretched it until it was twice its original length. I had so many fond memories of weekends spent at Brother and Sister Conrad’s fishing cabin. I thought about how quiet the mornings were on Morpheus Lake, how Brother Conrad and I used to fish and eat his wife’s homemade fried apple pies until our stomachs couldn’t hold any more.

  There’s something about being out on the lake, silently waiting for the fish to bite, that helps you think about things more clearly. And a special bond forms between fishing buddies. I felt that bond with Brother Conrad. He was my fishing buddy. He was my friend.

  The next thing I knew, I was dialing Brother Conrad’s number.

  Ring. Ring. Click. “This is Herb,” said the jolly voice on the other end.

  “Brother Conrad, this is Kevin.”

  There was a long pause, then Brother Conrad chuckled. “Bass are supposed to be bitin’ good this weekend. I’d sure like to do some fishin’.”

  This was Brother Conrad’s way to invite me to go fishing. The offer was exactly what I’d hoped for. “If you could use someone to bait your hooks, I’m free.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brother Conrad let me drive his big yellow truck to Morpheus Lake. He and his wife, Sister Imogene Conrad, followed behind in their sedan. It was fun to drive his truck; I felt like the king of the road, pulling a big bass boat on an even bigger trailer. My foot tingled each time I pressed the accelerator an
d made the diesel engine roar. The truck’s ride was smooth as it maneuvered the serpentine road leading to the Conrad’s cabin.

  When we arrived, I helped Sister Imogene unload the groceries.

  “Are you going to make your famous fried apple pies?” I asked.

  “Only if you promise to eat them all.” Sister Imogene lugged the cooler to the cabin and set it on the porch.

  “We’ll be goin’ out early, so you’d better make ’em tonight,” Brother Conrad said as he arranged our tackle in the bottom of the boat. “We gotta get out there before the fish, so’s they won’t suspect us.”

  Sister Imogene wrinkled her nose at her husband. “The earlier you get out of my hair, the quicker I can get something done. Just don’t catch anything you don’t intend to clean, ’cause you know I won’t do it.” She grabbed her broom and mop bucket and made her way to the kitchen, intent on banishing the dust that had settled over the winter.

  That night as I lay in bed, I listened to Brother and Sister Conrad snore. It was, in an odd way, a comforting harmony. I tucked the sheets under my chin and smiled. I tried to decide if they sounded like two moose in the backcountry or the diesel engine of Brother Conrad’s truck. Right before sleep closed in around me, I chose the moose.

  Brother Conrad woke me up at four thirty in the morning. Sister Imogene had been up long before that and had fixed enough food for twenty people. I ate biscuits, eggs, and country ham until I had to loosen my belt. Then Brother Conrad and I set out to catch some fish.

  We loaded our gear and snacks in the boat, and I pushed us off the bank. Brother Conrad started the trolling motor, and soon we were gliding across the water. The trees surrounding the lake were green and full. The air was fresh and the sunrise swelled with the promise of a new day.

  For the first time in weeks, I felt a sense of peace.

  When Brother Conrad found a spot he liked, he turned off the motor. We baited our hooks and cast our lines into the water.

  “Nice cast,” Brother Conrad said as my artificial bait hit the water several feet away. “I taught you well.”