Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  In the meantime, Jack Nash had recovered his poise and was hunkered down in front of her apologizing with sincere remorse and offering to help her replenish her stores. Even on his haunches, he towered above her and when she tilted her head to look up at him, the beauty of his intense blue eyes stunned her. Not only were they sympathetic to her plight but they were also absolutely lit with patient understanding. Rose had never before looked at a boy other than her brothers and up to that moment she considered them all pesky little creatures on the order of mosquitoes and flies. This one, who was almost a man in her eyes, and who was so beautiful he made her heart twinkle and dance in her breast, and who smiled at her as if he meant it, was no ordinary run-of-the-mill, brother-type.

  And that was when with absolute certainty Rose Saylor knew this was the man she would marry one day. There was no way he would ever be free of her after that moment. Their coming together was as fated by God as the Resurrection of Jesus. And he must have sensed some of her feelings because he stopped talking to reach out and pull her to her feet to stand between his knees. Now their eyes were almost on the same level and she leaned closer to stare into his. She had forgotten all about the mud pies and unknowingly, was standing right in the middle of them herself, but the only thing that mattered to her at that moment was the darkly handsome young man whose hands held her there between his knees. Impulsively she flung her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth. Jack backed away in surprise and nearly lost his balance, but then he laughed, righted himself and hugged her.

  The two men on the porch chuckled, and Toby Nash shook his head and grinned at Art Saylor. “I’ll wager that little beauty is going to cause you and Olivia some sleepless nights, Art,” and then everybody went back to their business. Jack Nash got to his feet, and feeling he had done all that was expected of him, strode over to where his horse was tied and started rubbing her neck. And Rose, from her place in the lane, watched his every move and etched his walk and his voice and the way he cocked his head and grinned—into her mind creating an image she would keep there forever and one she would eat, sleep, and dream with as long as she lived.

  And truth be told, that was exactly the way it all turned out.

  When confronted with those sweet memories and her natural optimism, Rose’s sense of despair was whisked away and soon she was busy washing the breakfast dishes and assuring herself out loud what a waste of time worry was. All the years she was growing up on the farm in Mississippi, her Papa read scripture to his family every evening come hell or high water, and gave all his children passages of the Bible to learn by heart while they busied themselves with their chores. So Rose always had some divine promise to cling to in the bad times, which had come often these past few years. Truth be told, they never failed to uplift her, though she rarely got up the nerve to spout them in front of Jack Nash. Those scriptures were about all her Papa had ever given her, but she had to give him credit for that, because a lot of times, they were the only things she had to hang onto when the worries got too much to bear. Claire Louise didn’t think she had sense enough to know when to worry. “That Rose Sharon,” she’d say to anybody within earshot, “She doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose!”

  Rose was splashing the dishwater with the gravy skillet to illustrate Claire’s enthusiastic denouncement of her mental capacity when impulsively, she turned away from the sink and, wiping her hands on her apron, went into that part of the room she considered her parlor. An old brown horsehair sofa with crocheted doilies on the arms and back sat against the long wall to her left with a low table in front of it. Facing that were a straight-backed upholstered chair and a plain wooden rocker with two bright-colored throw pillows in it. A brass floor lamp stood at one end of the couch and a library table sat against the front wall between two tall windows that looked out over the street.

  On the wall above that table Rose had hung some pictures—one of them in an oval tin frame. She took that one off its nail and dusted it tenderly with her apron. Then she held it close while she studied the portrait. She and Jack in sepia and all their youthful exuberance were smiling back at her and the love and joy in their faces made her heart swell to bursting right here and now, with gratitude for God’s goodness in bringing them together. The picture was taken in a real studio in Jackson the day after they’d run away and got married, and Rose was wearing the pale blue silk dress Jack bought her that very morning at Miss Anna’s Dress Shoppe in Maysfield. Maysfield was the town Jack worked in then, and he was renting a pretty little one-bedroom cottage for them to live in. So that was where they married and that was where they spent their first night together. But the next day, Jack wanted to take her someplace special on a short honeymoon, so they drove to Jackson, which was the state capital and the biggest and most exciting place Rose had ever seen outside of her geography book at school.

  She studied the picture intently as she did with regularity, to conjure up all the happiness and absolute ecstasy she had been feeling on that glorious morning. Sometimes, in the lean years since they left Maysfield, that overpowering sense of being in Paradise with the man of her dreams was hard to come by, unless he was right there in the room with her. Then, even if he was mad and wouldn’t talk to her, she felt as safe and secure and beloved as any woman who’d ever walked the face of the earth. Jack Nash did that for his woman. He gave her that certainty of his unwavering strength and courage and competence. And of his loyalty.

  Then Rose noticed her reflection in the glass covering the portrait and she started giggling, “And lotsa people think I’m prettier than you are too, Sister Claire!” she boasted out loud, tilting her head coquettishly. “I will admit I might not be as smart as you, but smart ain’t everything. I know how to love my man and keep him happy! And I am always aware of your notion that I am a fallen woman because I enjoy lovin’ my man,” she smirked. “And he’s not just any man either. It had to be Jack Nash, the most no-torious rascal in the county!” That spirit of joy overtook her again, and Rose danced a little jig, “In three counties!” And then she was laughing. “In the entire state of Mississippi!”

  The next moment her thoughts turned back to what was common gossip in her neighborhood in those days. That Jack was the real honest-to-goodness flaming youth that the circuit preachers ranted against, a devil that fathers and husbands sat up at night to ward off, with their shotguns at the ready, and the man every sinful woman and girl no matter her race, religion, nor age, daydreamed about and hoped she’d be the one he chose to ravish! Rose held the picture at arm’s length and looked into Jack’s eyes. “O my darlin’ Jack” she whispered, sliding the tip of her tongue between her lips, “And to think—I’m the one that won you!”

  She hugged the picture to her bosom and turned her eyes again to the gloom outside the window. But she wasn’t seeing the low, dark clouds or the bits of icy sleet or even the roofs of the buildings across the street.

  June 1927

  Rose was 13 years old and back on the farm in Dobbin—she was breathing hard and sweating and fighting to get loose in the steamy, shadowy dark of her mama’s bedroom where she had been dragged kicking and screaming after Papa found her in the lean-to hay shed with Jack Nash’s bare muscular arms holding onto her.

  Papa was going to kill him. He even got the gun down from its rack over the back door … but Mama had a cooler head and she told Brother to get the horse whip from the barn and encouraged Papa to whip him instead.

  It could only have been guilt that kept Jack from taking that whip away from the old man because he was certainly powerful enough to have done it. But he took his punishment without a whimper.

  Rose hadn’t witnessed the whipping, but she could hear the leather cut the air and crack across Jack’s back and an occasional swear-word drawn begrudgingly past his clenched teeth. All the while Rose was fighting like a bobcat, and she never did know exactly who or how many of her brothers and sisters betrayed her trust and held her there that afternoon. They knew they had been in a batt
le though, before it was over and they straggled out of there bloody and gasping for breath to lick their wounds. Truth be told there was never another time in the remainder of her life in Dobbin that anybody tried to subdue Rose Sharon Saylor. She could chuckle at the memory, but nobody had been laughing then. When Papa had exhausted himself and his rage, they hitched Jimmy the mule to the wagon and lifted Jack into it and then Brother drove him to his Daddy’s farm and dumped him at the end of the lane with nary a word to anyone.

  It was nearly a year before he ventured near Rose again. In fact he kind of disappeared altogether for a time. At least nobody could say where he was—or anyway, nobody would tell Rose.

  She touched the photograph to her lips and kissed it. “But I never wasted a minute worrying whether you’d come back, my sweet darlin’, I just knew that sooner or later you had to come back to me. Sooner or later! “ But that wasn’t exactly the truth, because Rose had spent that melancholy season wallowing in a deep and dark despair.

  Now she took some more time to study the photograph, remembering her surprise when her new husband took her to a real professional photographer’s studio right there in Jackson and they had their wedding portrait made. And now, truth be told, that picture was Rose Sharon’s most treasured possession. After Jack Nash, of course!

  Rose sighed and hung the tin frame back on its nail. Then she returned to the sink and finished the dishes. After dumping the dishwater down the drain, she started her regular cleaning and straightening-up routine. She surely was in an unusual nostalgic mood this morning and was finding it difficult to keep her mind on anything except the past. It seemed especially joyful to dwell on those dusty, sultry summer days and nights, some of which were so sweltering the only way you could sleep was to wring out the sheets you laid on in cold well water. It was hard to think there could have been heat like that anywhere when she was practically freezing to death right now in another of those awful Chicago winters. Of course, lying close to Jack and twining her body around his was a lot more comforting in this climate.

  Rose happened to notice the alarm clock while she was straightening up the bedroom and realized it was later than she thought. So she slacked off on the cleaning and started to gather a load of clothes for the weekly wash.

  Mary Jean, the lady who rented them their part of the building had a wringer-washer down in the cellar and she let Rose use it on Monday mornings between 10 and noon. That was a real blessing from God or she’d probably have to do it on a washboard in the bathtub and God forbid she have to go back to washing persnickety Jack’s white shirts on a washboard! She smiled recalling how fine he looked when he was wearing one of those crisply starched white shirts.

  April 16, 1927

  Then without willing it, Rose was back in Dobbin again on one of those late spring days when the sky is such a pure bright blue it swells your heart to look into it and all creation sparkles like sunshine on the ripples in the river. The leaves on the trees, the petals of the wildflowers, even the dust in the road—the very earth itself—twinkled and glittered just as though God had crumbled stars in his palm and blown the dust all over the world.

  Rose lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, visualizing that day again, living it again.

  It was the 16th of April, a Saturday, and the year was 1927—the very day Jack Nash took notice of her for the first time. Rose had turned 13 in March but Jack was already a man. He’d been a freshman in high school when she started the first grade, so he never even knew she existed. He had no notion that Rose had set her cap for him when she was barely 5 years old and still playing with her baby dolls.

  Whenever Papa would let her—after Jack had smashed her mud pies and she had sworn to marry him one day—Rose would ride in the wagon over to his house when Papa went there to talk business with Toby Nash. Jack wasn’t there more times than he was, but once in a while he’d amble over to the wagon and lean on it, listening to the older men’s discussion while he chewed on a piece of straw or some clover. Sometimes his gaze would drift in her direction and sometimes he’d even smile at her, but he was only smiling at a skinny little sharecropper kid. He wasn’t even sure whether it was male or female, and he couldn’t know the passion that burned for him in that little heart beneath the bib of her shabby, ill-fitting overalls.

  But Rose wasn’t worried about that because during all those evenings Papa had spent reading to his family out of the Bible, she’d learned the one thread of truth that wound through all the scripture was that you dare not doubt God’s word! If he said something, you could swear by its truthfulness. If he made a promise to you, he was going to keep it, and there wasn’t any way anybody could deny or question that or change his mind, either. It followed in Rose’s mind that when she talked her prayers to God and asked for some blessing, it would be hers. Maybe not in that day’s mail but in God’s time. It would surely come about in God’s sweet time. So Rose kept right on believing and growing up and waiting while Jack Nash went on with his life, graduating from high school and working his daddy’s land. He even started at some college or other but for some reason nobody talked about, he didn’t stay there long.

  And every now and then he rode his horse down the road past the Saylor house. That horse was a skittery black mare named Honey with a white splotch that sort of resembled a bee on her forehead and sometimes Jack had to talk real soft and gentle to her just to keep her from flying out from under him. That mare was so spooky, people got to calling her Wild Honey, and nobody would dare ride her but him. Sometimes Jack would lift his hat when he rode past. He always wore a fine gray Stetson that Papa said used to belong to the old Mister Nash, his granddaddy, and sometimes he would even stop and talk awhile to whichever Saylor happened to be outside at the time. A couple of times he even asked Papa how his daughter was doing, but that probably wasn’t too promising a development because Papa still had three daughters living in his house at the time and Jack Nash never did ask for one by name.

  Ida Belle was gone. She had joined the Baptist Church when she was 16 and a year later she up and married their newly widowed preacher. Claire Louise was long gone by then, being the first-born daughter and almost 14 years older than Rose. Sister Claire married that insurance salesman named Walter Bradley when she was 18 years old, and he moved her to Chicago two years after that. Walter got himself a job with an insurance company up there and in a few years he was rich and owned a fine house and even an automobile in which they would drive down to Dobbin on holidays and summer vacations—though they preferred coming back in the winter. Claire Louise would drive everybody crazy with her prideful stories about what they spent on food and clothes and overstuffed divans and at the same time rant and scold those sharecropping sisters of hers for coveting a pretty new dress or a pair of patent-leather shoes. And she was even worse about preaching God’s Wrath and calling down his fire and brimstone on everybody. It appeared that God wanted the very finest for Claire and Walter while he demanded sacrifice and downright impoverishment for the rest of the family. And, at least lately, it was always Rose Sharon who got the worst of it.

  And that was because Rose grew up and never bothered trying to hide her feelings for Jack Nash.

  And on the evening of that perfect April afternoon in 1927, Jack Nash started falling in love with her—though at the time he most likely would have denied it.

  Rose had turned 13 in March of that year and she was still spending at least a portion of every day daydreaming about Jack and what she would say to him if that day turned out to be the day when Destiny finally threw them together. Rose Sharon, being the baby girl with three older brothers and four older sisters, was considerably spoiled, especially by her Papa, who found in her sass and her beauty a little respite from the ugliness of his sharecropper life and the sorrow that his once pretty and spirited wife had grown old too soon and resentful from overwork and too many pregnancies. The fact that Rose was sandwiched between two sets of twin boys and had been “the baby” for four years before
the birth of the last child, who’d turned out to be another boy, hadn’t done anything to change her family’s partiality. Her family’s tolerance left her with free time to indulge her fantasies and flirtations because she wasn’t expected to work as constantly nor as hard as her siblings—indeed, most of her duties were related to day-to-day housework and helping her little brothers with their schoolwork—chores she could put off until she chose to do them. She was a natural procrastinator anyway and rarely even scolded for it. To waste her time daydreaming was never looked upon in the same way such behavior by her siblings would have been. And so it continued even when she became a teenager.

  Parts of her Jack Nash daydream were very repetitious, but now and then she’d come up with some thrilling new fairytale ending that would make the long-awaited encounter even more momentous. Today was that kind of day, and there were two reasons for it. The first was just that the day was so perfect. The second reason was that a lot of the gossip she’d heard lately was causing her serious concern that Jack Nash would marry somebody else or get himself tragically “maimed” before she got her chance at him.

  The road she walked this day marked the boundaries of her papa’s land, and it edged the fields in sharp cornered turns. You couldn’t see very far in any direction, and that gave her a feeling of isolation and a certain security because nobody could see her from far away either. In summer, corn and cotton were growing in the fields on either side of that stretch of road. It had just been planted in mid-March and was not tall enough yet to hide her. But between the field and the dirt road where they’d had all year to grow, weeds and wildflowers were taller than she was and made an almost solid hedge that helped conceal her from any nosy busybody who might be looking out the window of one of the few farmhouses out there in the distance or thinning out the plants in one of the nearby cotton fields—an occurrence that concerned her, just in case her daydream really did come true this day.