Like Daddy thought, Bertha reminded Missy of her Grandma. Even the way she’d misconstrued the groom for the elopement was so much like something Grandma Stuart would have done. Maybe that’s why Missy felt willing to give her another chance.
“Bertha, its Missy.”
“I’m so glad you called, Missy. I have to tell you, we saw you and Robert together last night, and the three of us decided you’re a beautiful couple.”
Missy caught her breath. The three of them included Mrs. Schoening? Had they watched them from the kitchen window?
“We’re not that way, Bertha.” Hadn’t Robert told them she’d almost eloped with another fellow this week? And tomorrow night, Robert was meeting with his old girlfriend.
“I saw the two of you together in church,” Bertha said.
“Yes, we sat together. The reason I’m calling is . . . I need some quick recipes for cabbage. Something you can throw together when last-minute company shows up. I really liked your Blue Ribbon Cabbage Rolls, but they take quite awhile.”
“Are you thinking main dish or side dish?”
“Both.” Missy smiled.
“In our church cookbook, Peg contributed a recipe for Bierocks on page forty. You basically wrap Bisquick dough around about a half cup of fried hamburger and cabbage filling and bake. You could serve a quick slaw on the side, but that may be a tad too much cabbage. Shirley Roberts’ Coleslaw recipe is our favorite.”
Missy flipped to page forty in her cookbook. Bierocks. For extra flavor, poke holes in the top, squirt ketchup inside and eat them with your hands. Douglas would like this recipe. She’d have to make it for Robert sometime. He wouldn’t know there was cabbage inside until he sunk his mouth into it.
“You’ll need a third item to round out the plate. Maybe corn on the cob. I’ll put some ears in a paper bag and leave it for you on the foyer table with your name on it or are you having this dinner tonight?”
“No, sometime next week.”
“My, you’re a planner.”
Schemer was more like it, Missy acknowledged with a smile.
CHAPTER 36
A dish of warm green beans, a pan of Preacher’s casserole, and the orange Fiesta bowl full of steamed rice crowded the Formica table in her homey kitchen. Missy bowed her head and held hands with Douglas and Daddy.
“Our dear, heavenly Father,” Daddy said. “Thank you for this beautiful meal. Our home. My son and my daughter. Thank you for the pretty flowers blooming near the front door and by the chicken coop. Thank you, Father. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
“Amen,” Missy added without thinking. Was it okay that she’d said Amen? It had just slipped out. Neither Daddy nor Douglas gave any indication that they’d noticed. She took charge of the casserole and ladled heaping servings onto each plate.
The phone rang and Missy stood up to answer it. It was Bill Blanchard. Stretching the phone cord, she handed the receiver to Daddy. “It’s Bill,” she whispered.
“Hi, Blanchard. Have you bought your fishing license yet?” Daddy peered at the ceiling. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Awful loud music you’re playing there. Uh-huh. That’s too bad. I’ve been studying up on my catalog. Wanted to show you a new line, too. Okay, maybe I’ll see you next week. Good-bye.”
“Bill’s playing at a nightclub tonight.” Daddy rose from the table and hung up the phone. “Could barely hear him. Said he’s going to pass on fishing tomorrow. Sounded a little sheepish if you ask me.”
“I think he’s a little afraid of your catalog, Daddy.”
He grinned and looked at Douglas. “I witnessed the other night to Bill Blanchard, from Blanchard and Associates.”
“That’s one way to get a rep to never come back.” Douglas shook his head.
“I think I did scare him off and I was finally starting to like the fellow.”
“That dinner was gravy,” Douglas said. “Didn’t even need ketchup.”
Missy smiled. The Preacher’s casserole was good. It had a little of everything in it; ground venison, onion, chow mein noodles, cream of mushroom soup. Douglas took seconds. Daddy took thirds.
“Missy and I are going fishing tomorrow on the Lewis River. Want to come?” Daddy passed Douglas the dish of green beans.
“I’m helping Gary roof tomorrow.” Douglas glanced at Missy.
“Be careful up there,” Daddy said. “Roofers fall hard.”
“Good one. Should make that into a bumper sticker.” Douglas leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms “Truth is, Dad, I’ve been helping him off and on. For a while, me and Gary were talking about having our own roofing business.”
With her fork held mid-air, Missy waited for her father to slam his hand down on the table or utter a near obscenity. The white embroidered Big John lettering on the chest area of his dark blue coveralls stretched and contracted, and then he simply nodded.
“I’ve decided that I’d rather have a roof over my head than be out in the weather all the time.”
“What are you saying?” Daddy’s eyes narrowed.
“I don’t like roofing enough. I think it’s time to change our name to Stuarts’ Auto Repair.”
“When I’m gone, you can call it Douglas’ or Stuarts’, but for now we’ve built a reputation on my name.” Daddy dropped his hand to the table with a thud. “That’s what you were doing all those times you said you were going fishing?”
“Yeah.” Douglas nodded. “Fishing was Gary’s idea. He didn’t want there to be issues between us until I knew whether I liked roofing or not.”
“That was real upfront and honest of him.” With a lift of his brows, Daddy looked at Missy.
Missy had heard it, too. Gary was showing signs of being someone who could pull the rug out from underneath a person if it suited his needs.
Just like his dad.
CHAPTER 37
Missy reeled in a nice summer steelhead. Daddy and she were fishing from the jet boat in their favorite spot near the Lewis River Golf Course. They’d had this slow-moving, quarter-mile stretch of water entirely to themselves for about an hour.
Daddy softly hummed one of the Felida church songs.
After she gave the steelhead a solid clubbing, she slid the bright fish inside their cooler.
“So Bobby Boy’s not coming over tonight,” Daddy said.
“No.” Didn’t he remember? “He’s helping his parents paint their home today, and tonight . . . he’s seeing some old girlfriend.” Missy held a hand over her eyes and cast halfway between the boat and the bank.
“That’s right. His mother picked out an orange sherbet color and his father thinks it’s going to make them feel hungry. Boat coming; you need to reel in,” Daddy said.
They watched an old, lime green jet sled motor by with three people in it. The fellow running the outboard turned around downstream, drove back and idled right where they’d been casting, no more than thirty feet away.
A woman wearing a bright pink scarf around large curlers knelt on the bow of the sled and eased the anchor into the water. A shorter woman wearing a straw hat held out an arm to assist the woman as she maneuvered off the bow.
“Can you believe it?” Daddy mumbled under his breath. “Hey,” he said loudly from his seated position near the motor. “That’s right where we were casting.”
“Plenty of river,” the lady wearing the curlers bellowed back.
“Can you believe it?” Daddy’s eyes were the size of golf balls. “They anchored right in the middle of Rainbow’s End, and she has the nerve to tell me, ‘Plenty of river.’”
Rainbow’s End was the nickname Daddy held for the hole. Steelhead, a type of large, sea-run rainbow trout, congregated in the deep, slow-moving water on their way upstream.
Before he became a Christian, Missy knew exactly how Daddy would have handled the situation. He would have motored within a foot of their boat, stood up and shown his six-foot-seven, 320 pound frame and asked the fellow to address their problem on shore. Today Daddy gave the situation more th
ought. He glanced at his long-handled gaff and shook his head.
Missy sighed in relief. The time he’d cut the fellow’s anchor, he’d used the gaff to pull up the rope.
“Lady,” Daddy said loudly. Neither of the women turned around. “Hey, Pink Rollerhead,” he said even louder.
Seated on a boat cushion, Pink Rollerhead turned to acknowledge him.
“Yes.”
“Your boat’s anchored smack dab where we were casting. It’s one of the best fishing holes on this river. If you would anchor upstream or downstream from here, we could all fish the hole,” Daddy said with his new, Christian-like voice.
Pink Rollerhead looked behind her to the skinny, gray-haired gentleman who sat near the motor. “We’re sticking right here,” she said. “This is exactly where we parked when we had good luck before.”
“Anchored,” Daddy said, loudly, “You park a car; you anchor a boat.”
“Offer him a cookie,” the lady with the straw hat said, nudging Rollerhead.
“No, one of us will have to move. And whoever moves will lose.” Though Rollerhead had said it quietly, they heard every word she whispered.
“Remember this,” cupping his hands around his mouth, Daddy whispered to Missy, “voices carry on the river.”
“We’re parked here and he’s just going to have to share the river,” Rollerhead said loudly.
Daddy threw his baseball cap on the floor of the jet sled. His forehead was all sweaty, his dark, thinning hair curled into tight ringlets. Picking up the cap, he returned it to the top of his head. He flicked the bail on his reel, and cast the chartreuse Roostertail spinner so it landed a few inches shy of the threesome’s boat and reeled in. After a couple more equally close casts, Daddy began staring at Pink Rollerhead.
“I think it’s the man you should be staring down, Daddy,” Missy whispered. “He was dumb enough to motor over there.”
With a gleam in his eye, Daddy reeled in. He clipped off the Roostertail and tied a three ounce cannonball sinker to the end of his line. There was no hook, only lead the size of a large marble. He reached the rod behind him, leaned forward and let the sinker fly across the water. It hit the side of the lime green jet sled. Daddy had always been a fine caster. If there were prizes for casting and aiming, Daddy could win trophies. Too bad Robert wasn’t here; he’d have another fishing story to tell.
“What the devil!” The gray-haired man exclaimed as he looked up from his rod. For a fleeting moment, he cast Daddy a look of pardon, like the incident had been mere coincidence. The gray-haired man reeled in and recast his line out the rear of the boat, downstream.
Daddy reeled in and cast toward the front of the boat where no one was seated. The cannonball sinker landed smack dab in the center of the bow. He let it bounce around a bit before he gave his line a small jerk and reeled in.
“You trying to hit us?” Pink Rollerhead yelled. She stood up and set her hands on her hips. She was tall and slim, and it was obvious that she wore the pants in the family.
Daddy set his rod down and stood up to his full height. Facing Pink Rollerhead, he set his hands on his hips and yelled back, “If I was trying to hit you, lady, I would have.”
“He’s big,” the shorter woman wearing the straw hat said.
“Plenty of river.” Rollerhead waved a hand as if Daddy’s boat was supposed to head somewhere else.
On his next cast, Daddy hit the side of their boat again with his three ounce cannonball sinker, and that was finally enough for the gray-haired man. Without conversing with Pink Rollerhead, he started the outboard motor, and maneuvered the boat downriver. They disappeared around the bend without looking back.
“Showed ‘em, didn’t we?” Daddy chuckled and clipped off the cannonball sinker.
“You sure did.” Missy peered downstream and wondered if there’d be a patrol car waiting for them at the take-out.
Over the next hour, they landed two more steelhead—their limit. As Daddy pulled up the anchor, Missy gathered courage to ask what had been needling her heart all morning and into the afternoon.
“Daddy, what do you think about Robert? I mean really think.”
He lowered the wet anchor to the floor of the boat and stepped on top of the middle bench seat on his way to the motor. If he was smiling, she’d missed it.
“Robert’s a fine, Christian man. I hope he finds a nice, Christian girl to marry. We don’t want him to be unequally yoked,” he said over the din of the motor.
Missy chewed on his words. “What does it mean... unequally yoked?”
Daddy sighed and cut the engine. “You wouldn’t team a ’66 Mustang with a Chevy 289. To the Ford purist, it’s sacrilege. You don’t mix makes. How did your mama’s parents put it? Something about an ox and a donkey would pull in different directions. They wouldn’t follow the same path in life. What happened with Gary?”
“We’re over.” She shrugged.
“I know, but what happened?”
Daddy wanted a full confession. He wanted to understand.
“I liked him for a long time.”
“I know you did.”
“And once I was finally his girl, I realized he wasn’t what I really wanted. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it?” She sighed and looked at the alder-lined river bank. “He kissed me in the Pit of Disappointments. He knew that’s where I was the day Mama . . .”
“Maybe he forgot.”
“You don’t kiss once and elope. What kind of courtship is that?”
“A quick one.”
Anchored up ahead in the next decent hole sat the old, lime green jet boat. Pink Rollerhead was hard to miss.
“Hurry and get two of the fish out and hold them up,” Daddy said.
Missy bent over the cooler and looped her fingers through the gills of two of the closest steelhead. While Daddy slowly puttered by their boat, she held the fish up—one in each hand.
“Couldn’t happen to nicer folks,” Rollerhead said.
Daddy smiled and bobbed his head back and forth on their way downstream.
The jet boat dripped water over the freshly-tarred interstate highway. Missy looked out the window at the passing countryside and then over at Daddy.
“I have a question,” she said, trying to prepare him.
He nodded.
“I was wondering; before you cast the cannonball sinker at their boat, did you pray?”
Daddy’s nose twitched. “No, Missy. The idea came to me and it was so brilliant, I merely reacted.” He glanced from her to the two-lane freeway. “The problem was I liked the idea so much I didn’t want to pray about it. But now, I’m starting to feel disappointed in myself. I know it’s not what Jesus would have wanted me to do.”
“What do you think Jesus would have done?” She glanced in her side mirror.
“He probably would have stayed right where he was in the boat and maybe used it as a time to fish for souls. That’s what I’ll do.” Daddy nodded to himself. “The next time we go fishing, I’ll bring a Bible; and if anyone anchors in our hole, I’ll get out the Bible and start reading the Book of John.”
“I think that will work better than the cannonball sinkers, Daddy.”
That evening after a decent supper of scrambled eggs and toast, Daddy sat at the kitchen table reading Mama’s Bible. Missy dried the skillet. It was just the two of them as Douglas was at Gloria’s and wouldn’t be home until late. Curious what Daddy was reading, Missy leaned over his shoulder. He was still on the same page as the day before.
Daddy held the Bible in one hand. “Says here, in John’s book—”
“Book of John.”
“Book of John.” Daddy nodded. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus said that, the words are in red.” He looked up at Missy. “Your mama had a hunger for God’s word. She’d been born again. I didn’t encourage her, Missy. I ignored this side of her. I thought she’d get over it.” His eyes were as crystal blue as the lakes they sometimes fished near Mount St.
Helens.
“She felt alone,” he said.
Holding the dish towel in the center of the skillet, Missy paused to imagine her parents seeing one another someday in heaven. They were both dressed in white and their faces were radiant.
“Pastor Norris told me that I need to memorize John 3:16,” Daddy said. “I’ve never been any good with memory work. It took me weeks to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in primary. Do me a favor, doll, and write this verse on four pieces of paper. Put one on the fridge, one on the bathroom mirror so I can look at it while I shave, one out in the shop by my desk—somewhere I’ll see it, and one in my room. Maybe on the lampshade, so I’ll remember to read it before I go to bed. Here’s a pen.”
“Don’t lose the page,” she said, finding a scratch pad.
“John 3:16.” Daddy stood up, stretched, and looked at the clock.
It was time for Gunsmoke. Missy frowned; it would have to wait. She wrote John 3:16 at the top of the scratch pad. The paragraph was written in red which meant it was something Jesus had said.
“For God so loved the world,” she whispered as she printed on the white scratch pad, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” The second time she wrote the verse, her heart felt tight against her chest wall, and then something in her shut off like a motor grounded to a stop.
After she’d written the verse four times, she used a magnet to secure the verse to the front of the fridge, near the top where Daddy would read it. For the second hand-written verse, she took a roll of Scotch Tape and climbed up on the bathroom counter and taped it on the mirror at about the height where Daddy looked when he shaved. She walked into his room and sat down on the edge of the bed. His nightstand was dusty. She taped the verse to the pleated lampshade; it fell off. It was too dusty to stick. She got a paper clip and clipped it on. Lastly, she walked outside toward the shop.
Fried Chicken and Gravy - Christian Romance Page 21
