Nazareth's Song

by Patricia Hickman

  “Hopper has it in for Mills,” said Jeb as they watched the two leave.

  “I believe we’re next.” Gracie lifted his body from the wooden chair as though it took all the strength he had mustered from breakfast to do so. He sipped on a bottle of medicine like it was milk and then hid it away inside his coat.

  From the office Mills called an older woman, Mona, inside and then sent her right back out. “Reverend Gracie, Mr. Mills is ready to talk with you.”

  Jeb issued a sigh that emptied him all the way to his feet. “It might be best for you to tell him without me present. I’ll leave and come back later.”

  Gracie thanked Mona. Then he touched Jeb at the back of his arm and gave a gentle thrust forward, allowing Jeb to enter ahead of him. Jeb felt more illegitimate than when he had come into town posing as Gracie himself.

  “Reverend Gracie, glad to see you,” said Horace before eyeing Jeb.

  Jeb extended his hand, to which Horace responded with a politician’s squeeze. “I guess those Welby children are keeping you busy. That Angel is growing like a weed.”

  Horace could immediately put people at ease, even those he tended to dislike. Jeb relaxed.

  The banker’s office had a leather smell—not like well-worn saddle leather but like the shiny leather of a gambler’s study. Jeb wondered if the door behind Horace’s desk chair led to the man’s genuine working desk, cluttered with stacks of papers and loan applications. This room had not one speck of dust. His desk had atop it only one gold magnifying glass and a fountain pen that Horace tucked into a desk drawer.

  Jeb and Gracie sank down into the two soft leather chairs that faced the desk. Gracie had a way of swallowing up the silence in a meeting with a pensive, reflective look about him, as though he owned the quiet and was preparing to fill it with brilliant, perfectly selected words. Jeb sat forward, prepared to look equally astute, until he saw that the coat sleeve around his wrist had frayed, with threads protruding like an old woman’s whiskers. He dropped his hands.

  Horace sat forward, his dark worsted jacket scented by the faint suggestion of a cigar he had no doubt extinguished before the minister turned up. “Have you been to see the doctor, Reverend?”

  “A few times since we last met. How is Mrs. Mills?”

  “Bossy and loving it. Preparing for our daughter, Winona, to come home. She has a break coming up from her classes. Wants to take off a semester. For what reason, I couldn’t tell you, but who can figure out what goes on inside a girl’s head. Amy is her usual anxious self, rolling out pie dough and keeping her kitchen help busy.”

  Jeb shifted to one side. His right elbow sank into the leather, which deflated like a tire beneath him.

  “Horace, I’ll be brief. Doctors in these parts are big on honesty but low on know-how. I’m all my girls and Philip have in the world.”

  Mills’s gaze trickled over to Jeb and then back to Gracie.

  “My brother and his wife live in Cincinnati and they have the highest regard for a doctor they want me to see.”

  “A visit to Cincinnati would do you good,” Horace said.

  Gracie lifted as though the chair were swallowing him whole.

  “Not leaving for good, though.” Horace’s brows made a gray ledge beneath the age lines that mapped a near perfect tick-tack-toe in the center of his forehead.

  “Jeb is near ready for his ordination. He’s studied like the wind, like I did at his age.”

  Jeb saw how Horace examined him for any sign of a blemish. Before the banker could raise a complaint, he sat forward. “Mr. Mills, I know my past is shady. But Reverend Gracie has taught me well. I trust his teaching. I love Nazareth, and I want to serve Church in the Dell.”

  “Jeb’s passed every seminary course I’ve had mailed to him,” said Gracie. “He has agreed to preach this Sunday. It will be his first time since his apprenticeship with me began.”

  Jeb’s stomach did a flip-flop.

  “And his first time since he was jailed for fraud and attempted murder,” said Horace.

  Jeb felt as though his entire body had gone numb, like his whole bottom half had been run over by a tractor.

  Horace’s smile spread like the opening of a dam. “Ha-ha! Just joshing you, Jeb. Or is it Reverend Jeb?”

  Gracie, if he were elated, hid it soberly. “I can’t stay in Nazareth much longer.”

  “If I could get him to stay, I would,” Jeb told Horace. He knew his promise sounded empty. Only this morning he had found Gracie seated at his desk drinking his bottle of medicine.

  “Jeb, you’re still quite young,” said Horace.

  “Thank the Lord for that.” Gracie checked his pocket watch. “I’ve a few things to do before the day is done. Horace, you should know I would not leave you all if I didn’t have to. I’m not talking about next week or next month if I can help it. I want Jeb stable and the church ready for the change. If Jeb were not my apprentice, it’s likely you all might go a long while without a minister. I know of two ministers who divide their time between several congregations. The way this Depression is going, it’s a miracle you all have maintained a minister at all.”

  “Don’t I know it?” said Horace.

  Jeb was uncertain that Horace could see God’s hand guiding them through the difficulty as readily as Gracie.

  “You’re not leaving right away, then?” Horace asked.

  “Jeb will be handling all the bank matters for the church. But he’s done that for me often enough of late. I don’t know how long this stomach of mine will hold out. But I’ll smooth the waters the best I can.”

  “Jeb, why don’t you come with me, then? I’ll have you sign some papers giving you permission to bank for Church in the Dell. Reverend, we’ll need your signature too.” Horace rose. To Gracie, he muttered something indiscernible to Jeb, as though he was cutting Jeb out of the conversation. Jeb could sense Horace’s dislike for him. He noticed Horace did not look at him again for the rest of the morning.

  Nazareth had the smell of tar beneath and a thundery day overhead. The town had a September cool that brought a few merchants out onto the walk. Every store window, from Fidel’s Drugstore to Faith Bottoms’s Clip and Curl, was pasted up with posters and torn-out magazine advertisements for things no one could buy.

  A local man with hair jet black, as though he had slicked it on with oil, shouted into a public-address system he had jimmied outside Honeysack’s General Store. Jeb knew him from church, a man who checked his watch often during the morning sermon and then leaped to his feet to shake as many hands as possible. The man was yelling about the Depression and his race for a state senate seat. “Vote Bryce for Your Next Senator” was emblazoned in smart red-and-blue lettering across a wooden sign he had placed on a type of home-fashioned stand. The slogan beneath his name was pungent with a Depression-year promise: “Let’s End This Thing Together!”

  Out in front of the bank Jeb and Gracie shook hands, Gracie with more assurance than Jeb. They agreed to meet once more before Sunday to get Jeb ready for a turn behind the pulpit, the first time with legitimacy. Jeb watched Gracie amble toward his parked car. As he went, several people, some churchgoers and others not, stopped to greet him with a “Hello, Reverend” and “Sure hope you’re praying for rain, Preacher.” Respect for Gracie in Nazareth had spilled over into the hilly provinces beyond the town limits, bringing families from as far away as Whelan Springs and Camden to hear him preach. Church in the Dell had grown with new faces since Gracie had taken the pulpit, although the offering basket had yet to reflect that growth.

  Down the street, Will Honeysack waved his arm, his sleeve rolled up and pinching at the elbow. Jeb met him at the doorway of the general store. “Afternoon. Wish that thunder would turn to rain.”

  “Freda said it sounds like a dry thunder. Come inside. Got them banjo strings you ordered. Had to send clear to Cleveland for ’em. Those Cleveland folk know about musical instrumentation and the like.”

  Will had cranked the radio loud e
nough to split melons. Kate Smith trilled out “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.” Two girls not any bigger than Ida May and wearing hats too hot for September basked in the light of the window and sang every word as though it were the last song to be sung on earth.

  Jeb inspected the strings and then let Will slip them into a bag.

  “Say, you know how to string a banjo?” Will asked.

  “Like stringing fence wire. Can just about do it in my sleep.”

  “Louis, come up h’yere!” Will yelled to a man in the sugar-and-flour-sack aisle. “Jeb, this feller’s been looking for a man who could string a banjo.”

  Jeb vaguely recognized the man as someone he had seen on occasion around the barbershop.

  “This is Jeb Nubey, Louis,” Will said.

  “I been looking for somebody what could string a banjo for my boy. He got it from a peddler, and his momma thought it weren’t good for nothing. Kin I bring it by your place and let you give it a look?”

  Jeb did not know if the news should be spread around the county that Church in the Dell had a banjo-picking preacher. Some folk—womenfolk anyway—did not take to banjo picking.

  “I’ll pay you two dollars if you kin get it ready and tuned. Cash on the barrelhead.”

  “Bring it by my place. Saturday latest. I’m up around the creek that runs north of Marvelous Crossing. John Long’s old house,” said Jeb.

  “I heard of the place.”

  They shook on it.

  “Seems I’m always learning something new about you.”

  The woman’s voice came from behind Jeb. Without turning around he said, “Afternoon, Fern.”

  Fern Coulter came to the counter with a sack of brown sugar and a spool of white thread. “This is all I need today, Will.”

  She had tucked her hair into a Crest hat, a blue knit with a soft brim that sat at a slanty angle across her forehead. Even though Jeb often tired of her constant hat-wearing, he had to admit she looked good in this one. The blue against her blonde hair reminded him of a butterfly that had landed on a white delphinium, stunning but elusive.

  He had not spent a decent moment with Fern since that day in August when she had dropped him like hot rocks. School had given her reason to pour every minute of the day into her work. She still showed up at their house every Sunday, as she had done for over a year, to help the Welby children dress for church. But she always came after Jeb had already left to open the chapel windows and doors. She arrived at church with the children just before the opening prayer and disappeared after the last amen to avoid an exchange of words between them. And overnight she had developed a diplomat’s gift for avoiding Jeb’s offers for dinner, even the offers attached to helping the Welbys with schoolwork.

  Jeb reached for the bagged strings.

  “You play the banjo,” Fern said. “You’re a surprise a minute.”

  “Not since I was a boy. Charlie sent it to me last month after he found it up in my daddy’s attic. You remember Charlie. Thanks for ordering these for me, Will.”

  “Why’d you quit playing?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Everybody makes a bad choice now and again. Seemed right at the time.”

  “Ida May has some reading tonight. I just say that in case she forgets. Angel can help her with it.” Fern pulled two coins out of her handbag and pushed them across the counter as though they were not too hard to come by. She did not flaunt her daddy’s money and had chosen to teach to escape the socialite escapades of her other siblings. But she had never gone without like the other girls who had moved away from kin. Her father would not have stood for it.

  “Want to meet me for coffee at Beulah’s, maybe a slice of her pie?” Jeb asked. His invitation sounded forced, wooden—not at all like he had rehearsed it.

  Fern lifted her eyes and looked at Will. Will handed her the bag and said, “He ain’t talking to me.”

  “I’m busy for a lot of weeks, maybe even more than that.” Fern had yet to turn and face Jeb.

  “How about three tomorrow, after you’re finished with your school duties?” Jeb felt the thin thread of his luck tangling around his throat. The conversation wasn’t going as he had imagined.

  Will polished his counter a third time.

  “I meant to tell you something I noticed about Angel,” Fern said. “She’s not been herself, and you know how transparent she is when she’s troubled. Has she mentioned anything to you about her friendship with Asa Hopper’s son Beck?”

  “Angel’s friends with everyone.” Disgusted with himself, Jeb gave up on a direct answer to his offer of pie. He turned to leave. But before he could step away, Fern spoke.

  “I could go for pie, I guess.”

  3

  White Oak Lake spawned the brooks that fed into the green waters of Marvelous Crossing with its algae-crowned city of minnows and catfish. Yesterday Angel and her siblings had taken one last swim beneath the bridge before the first frost came and browned the landscape and chilled the lakewaters to an icy tea. As they swam, Jeb had studied sermon notes out on the front porch while his angst over coffee with Fern ate at him. Then, for the second night in a row, he had not slept. While Angel packed Willie and Ida May out of the house the next morning to walk to school with the neighbor girls, Jeb stood bent over the back steps and poured a bucket of water over his head.

  “I know there’s something wrong with you.” Angel appeared at the corner of the pine-timbered rental house with Ida May swinging on her skirt.

  “You’ll be late for school. Mrs. Henderson will give you extra work for that,” said Jeb. With an old cotton rag, he toweled his hair and then slicked it back behind his ears.

  “Every time you get riled up again over Miss Coulter, you mope around the house like some kicked hound.”

  “You don’t know nothing.”

  “I know you like I know that when I lift a stump I’ll find grubs. I never see you changing shirts after you’ve fed Bell, like you used to so you’d show up at the schoolyard with a fresh shirt and smelly hair slickum. The more times Miss Coulter turns you down, the worse you look.”

  Jeb stared at his face in the kitchen window glass. “I don’t remember wearing a fresh shirt to take you varmints to school.”

  “Not anymore. And now you make us walk. I know when I’m bein’ used, Jeb Nubey!”

  “Besides, just because I stop wearing hair jelly don’t mean I’ve lost my self-respect. I may have lost Fern, but I still got the charm in me; don’t wager I don’t, Biggest.”

  “When you hide things from us, it’s all over you, like the way you hold yourself in a hug with both hands and stare out the winder like someone’s up and run off with your mind.” Angel scooted Ida May back around the house. “Stop listening in, Big Ears.”

  Jeb followed them a few steps and yelled, “Don’t you be shooting off your mouth at school that I’m moping around over some bookworm schoolteacher. It ain’t even true!”

  Angel ushered her sister forward and then smacked Willie for touching her hair.

  “If I’m not here when you get back from school, just get Ida May and Willie on their school lessons.”

  “Where you going?” Angel asked.

  “Town. That’s all you need to know. Go on, now.”

  He listened as their voices chimed in with the girls who walked with them to school and then faded into the birdsong of early morning.

  Inside, he made fast work of throwing on a clean shirt that matched as well as anything with the only good pair of brown trousers he owned. He muttered to himself, “Nothing wrong with wearing a fresh shirt. A man has a right to change his shirt if he wants. No big-mouth kid has a right to dictate my toiletry habits.”

  His back still ached from his last day at the lumbermill, and he couldn’t remember if Ida May had done her reading lesson. And now Angel, just as Fern had prophesied, had gone and gotten a sour manner about herself of late. He sighed. He had to watch her mouth like a snake charmer watched a cobra. The more he tri
ed to be father to her and the other two, the more he remembered what his life as a bachelor had been like.

  After coffee with Fern, he needed to meet Gracie at the church. That gave him most of the day to look for work. He headed for town, figuring he could ask Will Honeysack for any extra loads he might need delivered. The last paycheck from the lumberyard would last another week at best.

  Jeb drove into town. With most of the town children back in school, Nazareth’s streets held a quiet morning lull, like a churchyard at sunrise. None of the shops had seen a new coat of paint in years. But the clearness of day brought out the barn reds and sage greens of the shop fronts. Today, state senate hopeful Bryce had planted his campaign on the courthouse steps. He passed out leaflets to the few passersby before heading out for bigger fish in Hot Springs.

  Jeb dropped into Beulah’s and she scrambled an egg for him for two cents and then threw in the coffee to boot. He chatted up FDR with Deputy Maynard, the same cop who had locked him up and then let him go, and sat long enough to have Beulah fill his cup twice.

  “I thought the old lumbermill was closin’ down,” said Maynard. “Good thing Hayes Jernigan had the sense to take on that out-of-state job. Boys like you done down on your luck. I feel for you’uns. I hear Jernigan may lay off another string of men next week. Those boys been with him since 1925 and then they daddies before them.”

  “Guess I better get to old Will Honeysack’s before the other fellas make a line right out of his store,” said Jeb.

  “Maybe so. Reverend Gracie says you took to your studies like a regular college swell. I bet you make a preacher after all, that’s what. I don’t care what anyone says.” Maynard sipped his coffee, brewed hot and black enough to pave Main Street.

  “Maynard, you think anyone in this town could ever think of me as a minister?” asked Jeb.