Nazareth's Song

by Patricia Hickman

  “If it weren’t for the children, I’d not blink an eye about staying. I can’t imagine how things would turn out for them without me. Bad enough they lost their mother. I’m terrified for them.”

  A flock of Canada geese startled the sky all at once and dived beneath the line of trees, calling out to one another that winter would soon flush all warmth from the hollow. Jeb shifted in the rocker, wanting to steer the conversation back toward safer topics. But he noticed the beads of sweat above Gracie’s upper lip and the diluted color of his cheeks and temples. He said, “Reverend Gracie, you and I both know this town took a long time to find you and get you to come and pastor Church in the Dell. You can’t leave.”

  “Ever notice how life is one big fleeting chapter after another? You take Saint Paul. Never could settle in one place.”

  Jeb stopped Gracie’s hand as it tapped the chair arm. “You can’t be bad sick. God wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Don’t presume to second-guess God, Jeb.”

  Jeb drew back, respectful of his mentor.

  Gracie began to lay out the plan he had mentally organized over the course of the last week. “We’ll give the congregants time to grow accustomed to the idea. I’ve heard of another doctor in Hope who might be able to help me until I can get to Cincinnati.” He caught Jeb’s deflated look. “I don’t mean I’m throwing in the towel just yet, so don’t look at me like that.”

  Jeb still knew of those in Nazareth who had not forgiven his phony preacher stint when he’d used the Welby children as his family for a front. He had been on the run from the law not one year ago. The memory of his brief season of crime still weighed him down, not only in his own mind, but in the minds of the townspeople who had believed he should be lynched. Looking back on all of it—Angel’s wrinkled scheme, his puerile belief that he would wind up the town preacher with a girl like Fern on his arm—still left him astonished that he had not been struck down by the Almighty. It was like him to run. He had not meant to stay long enough to get found out and arrested. But the omnipotent One had laid out a different plan.

  The thought of Gracie’s duties being suddenly dumped in his lap gave him a queasy feeling, like looking out over a canyon while the ground eroded under his feet.

  “Your thesis opener isn’t bad. I’d like for you to bring me a fresh new sermon. Tomorrow.”

  “What makes you think I’m ready to preach, let alone step into your shoes?”

  “Man like you hates to accept defeat. You’re like the young boy pedaling uphill with all his brothers watching. I know you’ve been trying to prove yourself to everyone in town. Including that schoolteacher.”

  The girls from Marvelous Crossing raced down the road, followed by the Welbys. Jeb could see Angel leading the chase with elbows crooked and bare feet pounding. Little dusty ghosts of red clay trailed behind them.

  His obligation had somehow become his family, he realized. Jeb had never heard about youngens being put out when he was growing up. These days it was the same as being orphaned—nobody around to see to your meals and teach you the ways of the world from a comfortable perch. Either way, you had better find a body to latch onto or starve. Like the Welbys, past things had put him out too. But Nazareth had become their place to land. Odd the way they had become a family—Jeb, Angel, Willie, and Ida May—like someone had knitted with threads of cotton and wool a thing of comfort. Although the biggest, Angel, had her prickly ways.

  Jeb felt Gracie slipping away from him, as though he were being cast to sea. “Six more months with you, and then I’ll take that platform, Reverend.”

  “I know this is hard for you, Jeb. Give yourself some mulling-over time.”

  “People here count on you, like you’re the man of the house when it comes to Church in the Dell.”

  Gracie spoke to himself as he checked off a mental list. “So much to tell you. Things like how to keep your mind on the flock and out of town politics. I’d better write all this down. Where’d I put my glasses?”

  Jeb hated to tell him they were right on the bridge of his nose where they belonged.

  Gracie picked up the thesis and passed it back to Jeb. “Best you read me a little more. The sun is going down and we’re low on coal oil.”

  Nazareth’s bank had just closed when Jeb arrived downtown with the small offering Gracie had given him to deposit. Jeb had seen more squeezed from corn than was wrung out in that offering plate. He tapped on the window glass where the clerk, Finn Dudley, was pulling down the shade.

  “Finn, can you take this deposit for Reverend Gracie?” Jeb said, knowing Gracie carried more weight than he.

  Finn’s gaze made a half-circular examination of the bank lobby behind him.

  “For the church, Finn.”

  Finally, with a sigh as reticent as pond mist, the obliging clerk pulled out a ring of keys. Jeb smiled at him through a circle drawn in the window dust by a youth. He met Finn at the counter, where the clerk carried out the transaction while talking about the piping hot supper he had waiting for him back at the house.

  “Sorry to keep you from your supper, Finn.”

  Finn mentioned that the wife could always throw an extra tater in the pot if he would join them. Jeb mulled over the invite, all the while knowing he had three more mouths to feed besides his own. But before he could respond the front door snapped open. Asa Hopper came into the bank like he had just bought it.

  “Evening, Asa,” Jeb said, even though Asa looked past him.

  “Mr. Mills is gone for the day, Asa.” Finn kept his eyes on the deposit, which would have been his habit anyway, so as not to lose count. But it seemed he did not want to give Asa the satisfaction of looking into his eyes.

  “This Depression ain’t no excuse to just haul off and kick a man when he’s already fighting to scratch together two nickels, Finn!” Asa had a bearlike countenance, brown eyes liquid as kerosene. He held up a letter that had the bank’s address at the top. “Ain’t no one who could come up with this kind of money in two weeks. I got big deals, I tell you, that will land me in the money—but not in two weeks.”

  “It’s none of my business, Asa.” Finn kept counting the money.

  Jeb knew the church offering was paltry and figured Finn had counted it three times by now. “I’ll be out of here, if you two are needing to do personal business.”

  Finn’s fingers turned white around his fountain pen. “No need to hurry off, Jeb. I can’t help you, Mr. Hopper. Your business is not with me, but you already know that.”

  “You tell that banker, Mills, this is not my last time to come looking for him. If I want to see him, I know where he lives.” Asa wadded up the letter and tossed it on the rug where people wiped their feet. Then he turned to leave and slammed the door behind him.

  The big clock near the door clanged out the hour of six o’clock as though it timed Hopper’s exodus.

  “I should have locked up behind us,” said Finn.

  Jeb felt responsible for the whole scene with Asa. Finn had already wrapped up his evening clerk duties and might have motored halfway home by now if he had not wangled his way inside. “I should have waited until tomorrow. Is something wrong with Asa Hopper?”

  Jeb had never known much about Asa. His wife, Telulah, was a woman as slight as a frail twig in winter, even seeming at times to snap in two if any of the other women tried to engage her in everyday talk. Some Sundays she came with their brood of five youngens, although usually it was with just their youngest, Beck. But Asa never visited the church. Not for Easter sunrise service or even shadowing the wife at the church picnics like other men that preferred Sunday on the creek bank.

  “Asa’s like every other poor old Joe in the country—needing relief but not knowing where to get it. I wish him well, but I can’t help the man.”

  Jeb recalled that the Hoppers owned a large spread of land just outside Nazareth, a place running over with several big, strapping boys who looked like men years before they’d come of age. “Don’t we all wish
this Depression would let go? Been like an old mean dog, tearing up people’s lives as it lopes down the road.”

  “Here’s your receipt, Jeb. Or should I call you Reverend Nubey?” asked Finn.

  It was the first time since Jeb had lied about being a preacher that he’d heard the title Reverend in front of his own name. He figured he would have to let it settle on him until he no longer felt like a fraud, like he’d been cut out of the newspaper in little Gracie silhouettes. He thanked Finn, stepped around the wadded paper on the rug, and opened the door.

  Hopper yelled out the open window of the jalopy driven by his oldest boy. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Dudley! You tell that to Mills!”

  Jeb hesitated long enough to watch Hopper disappear around the next block. “Finn, go on and lock up behind me. It’s getting late.” He waited until Finn had locked the door.

  When the sun set, it was as though all Jeb’s energy drained with it. He was as tired as the day had been long.

  2

  Angel came running out of Honeysack’s General Store holding a newspaper under one arm and hair ribbons in the other. As she seated herself next to Willie and Ida May, who sat in her brother’s lap, Jeb said, “I asked you to get a newspaper and that’s all.” He took the newspaper from her. “I can’t have you spending money we don’t have, Biggest.”

  “Ida May and I can’t go to school without ribbons.”

  “Your hair is fine. Vanity never did no one no good.” Jeb cranked the truck engine.

  “Fellers shouldn’t get involved in a girl’s business. Here, Ida May, take two, one for each braid.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It don’t mean nothing. Let’s hurry before we’re late.”

  Jeb slowed the truck to goad her. Angel huffed in exasperation.

  “Men like you don’t get women—how we think and such, and what we got to have.”

  “I knew women in Texarkana who would disagree with you.”

  “Floozies don’t count as real women.”

  “Last time I checked, women was women, big, little, purty, or bad.”

  “What’s a floozie?” asked Ida May.

  “If you knew women, you wouldn’t have so much trouble keeping one. A woman needs a man to spend his last dime making sure she has what she needs.”

  “You got a lot to learn, Biggest, about men and women.”

  “Be stubborn, then. And single.”

  The drive away from the schoolhouse was quiet. Jeb had deposited all three Welbys at the school drive so that he could be the first to see Hayes Jernigan, the lumberyard boss, about more work at the lumbermill. The way he had it figured, with what he’d made last week, he could pay off his debts at Will Honeysack’s store and still have extra for daily grub.

  After speaking with Hayes, Jeb waited outside the lumberyard office while Hayes figured his numbers and payroll. Finally, to while away the time, Jeb pulled his old banjo out of the pickup. His brother, Charlie, had dug it out of their mother’s attic and sent it to him over a month ago. Jeb played an open note, placed his finger over the middle fret of the first string, and then chimed the note. He plucked the fretted note next, but found it low. After adjusting the bridge, he plucked the note again, chimed it, and found it right.

  As he waited for the yard boss to appear, he strummed a tune about a sailor. It set the lumberyard dog to barking, so Jeb played faster, laughing at the mutt the men called Dawg for lack of a better name. Dawg squatted in front of him, his tail swaying, friendly-like, a hairy pendulum.

  Jeb felt the weariness of study and work easing out of him as he played. He had stayed up too late trying to tend to the obligatory sermon, all the while sensing Gracie looking over his shoulder. Then he’d stared up from his bed for hours, troubling over how some townspeople of Nazareth still looked down on him and the Welbys. The duties of the clergy seemed to hang over him like a hammer, ready to pound out of him any hope for gaining respect if he took the job before his time. If he ever did take the pulpit again, he told himself, he would prove his sincerity for reaching for so high a mark as the station of clergy.

  Then his mind had run to worry, to finding a way out of the fight for everyday survival. He did not know how he could keep the Welby children without this lumbermill job or even afford to keep up his studies and work at the same time. He had not planned well for everyday life. But what else could he do but keep trying? The youngens had no place left to go. Angel had written to her aunt in Little Rock so many times he couldn’t bear to see her watching every day for a letter saying her momma had gotten well. Much less a note from a daddy who had left the children in the care of an old girlfriend and then disappeared with a wave of migrant workers.

  Hayes Jernigan exited the office and shambled across the quiet lumber lot, counting a few dollar bills. Jeb’s heart sank.

  “Nice picking for a preacher. Dawg seems to like it anyway.” Hayes laughed at the mutt’s interest in Jeb’s playing. “A few of the boys put in a word for you. Tuck Haw especially.”

  Tuck played pool down at Snooker’s every evening with the other lumbermen. Jeb had stopped in to say a polite word to him and the other lumbermen last Friday night, but they mostly kept to themselves. It surprised Jeb that Tuck had spoken up for him, what with that particular group of men not finding favor first of all with a former con man but worst of all with a man intent on the study of church doctrines and such.

  “They asked me to keep you on, Jeb. But I got to do what I can to hang on to men with tenure.” He handed Jeb his final pay. “If we hadn’t gotten that deal to build barrels, I’d be losing lumbermen that’s been eating sawdust since they was born. I hate that I don’t have no more work for you. I hope you find some.” He studied for a bit, as though rehashing what he had just said, and then added, “What I mean to say, Jeb, is it’s a cryin’ shame I got to let you go, what with those youngens you been carin’ for. My wife won’t hardly talk to me for it.”

  Jeb thanked him anyway. “I’m obliged to you, Hayes.”

  “You still countin’ on preacherin’, I guess. Some people believes they’s good money in religion.”

  Jeb counted the coins from his pocket before adding the dollar bills. “One day, Hayes. You ought to come to church.”

  “My wife would agree,” said Hayes.

  Jeb knew that even Hayes had heard how he had skulked into town over a year ago pretending to be a preacher to feed himself. He figured Hayes’s churchgoing wife had more to do with the lumberyard owner hiring him than he had admitted. Jeb had hated how first one man downtown and then another always kept bringing up the past. But Hayes had kept his opinions to himself for the most part. After several months Jeb had finally felt a friendship forming between them. But Hayes’s letting him go said that business priorities had finally overridden camaraderie.

  “Wish I had more work for you, Jeb.”

  With what Hayes might have paid him over the next two weeks, Jeb could’ve stretched out beans and corn bread for that long. Now he would be back at the general store by Monday, most likely, delivering seed to farmers again.

  Hayes walked him out to the truck. “I ain’t seen a banjo around these parts in a while. I had a cousin who could play like the devil.”

  “My momma once said it was of the devil. After she died, I felt bad every time I picked it up. Only reason I got it is because my brother, Charlie, sent it to me. Seems a shame to hide it in the attic.”

  “I’d like to hear you do another tune sometime. I like good fiddling and banjo playing. Makes me forget my troubles for a bit. Maybe it is of the devil, but I like the sound of it.”

  Hayes heard a dinner bell ring and glanced up toward his office. His wife, Molly, waved a brown bag of something fatty from the grassless path to the office. Hayes told her to wait inside. “You drop by and tell us how you’re doing from time to time, Jeb.”

  Jeb left him to tend to his meal.

  The road from the mill to downtown Nazareth wound for miles, w
ith rocks spitting out from under the tires like vipers. If he had turned right at the crossroads, he would be headed toward Hope. He had driven the kids there in July to buy a watermelon. Willie had eaten it until the bottom half of his face was stained red.

  The thought of sending that boy and his sisters to places unknown quickened Jeb’s anxiety.

  He headed straight and aimed for downtown Nazareth. He had to meet Reverend Gracie at the bank. Gracie intended to let Horace Mills, the banker, know of the upcoming transfer of the pastorate to Jeb, maybe by Christmas or even sooner. Mills and his wife had at times been the sole support of Church in the Dell, other than the families who tithed from their pantry or henhouse when cash had become such a rarity. Gracie had often sought advice from Mills about financial matters.

  Jeb parked alongside the walk that ran in front of the bank and pulled out a fountain pen given to him by Freda Honeysack from the general store. She had called it a good-faith gift when he had begun his apprenticeship with Gracie. Through the glass of the bank’s windows, he saw the back of Philemon Gracie’s head colored like frost. He had arrived early and taken a chair to wait on Jeb. When he saw him he waved him inside.

  Jeb had never known Reverend Gracie to cater to anyone, let alone Mills. But he had always shown his appreciation. Still, Jeb remembered how Horace Mills had changed toward him when he’d told him how sorry he was for the scam. Horace had not taken much stock in Jeb’s conversion, paying him as much mind as he would that lumberyard dog.

  “I hate to bother the banker on his busiest day,” Jeb said now.

  “Mr. Mills has supported Church in the Dell when no one else could. Better that we tell him about the change rather than surprise him.”

  Mills’s office door opened and then stopped partway as though it had a spring weighting it from inside. A muffled voice, low like a man keeping secrets, followed the drawling door.

  Asa Hopper appeared. His anger drew up his elongated jaw and turned his face pink as pickled eggs. Behind him came a tall young man who looked to be the oldest Hopper boy, skinny with a face that looked stepped on. Hopper leaned back inside the office and yelled something critical and then closed the door. The boy lagged behind, mumbling monotonous echoes to his father’s angry rants.