Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  But looking up to see Jack Nash in her kitchen did give her a start, though she managed to show nothing of her surprise and the only thought that came to her was “Thanks be to God, Papa is still in the barn!”

  Rose, who in her excitement may not have shown the sense God gave a goose, forged a path through her brothers toward her Mama, with her hand stuck straight out so that Jack’s ring glimmered and gleamed like the morning star for all the world to see. “Look, Mama,” she said and her smile lit up the room.

  Ollie’s eyes went from the ring back to the chicken without a word. She knew her lack of reaction was a big disappointment to Rose, but she really didn’t know what to say.

  Minutes passed, and Rose and Jack waited in silence, watching dust motes drift through the rays of an almost blinding mid-morning sun that was pouring into the room through the wide-open, curtainless window behind Mama. But everybody else in that big square kitchen continued as they had been before the interruption. Gradually, Rose began to draw back her hand while her smile faded away. It occurred to her that maybe all those others in the room were not real people at all. Maybe they were just her imagination. Maybe she was still out there on that hot dusty road praying for Jack Nash to come back from wherever he’d run off to. Maybe Jack and his car and her ring were nothing but another of her crazy and desperate daydreams.

  Rose sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She looked away from the mesmerizing sunlight, breaking her train of thought. Of course Jack was real and so was that ring on her finger ... she would not let her family ruin all the joy of this most perfect moment of her life.

  With a resigned smile, she turned to Jack and one shoulder lifted in a hopeless shrug. He shrugged back and waited for her to decide what move to make “Well,” she said finally, “it’s plain to see nobody here cares one way or another about us, so we might just as well go ahead and do it.”

  She gave her Mama one last angry and disappointed glance and started walking toward the door.

  Admiration for her feistiness made Jack grin, but instead of following her he moved close to where Ollie was standing, her face still without expression, staring down at the chicken parts on the table in front of her and the knife in her hand. The woman stiffened with shock though, when he slid his arm around her shoulder and hugged her to his chest.

  “Now, Miz Olivia,” and his voice was as soft as moonlight and as comforting as music, “I know you got some bad feelings toward me and I can’t say they are altogether undeserved. But your Rosy has gone and made a new man of me. I guess you probably think that’s a lot of bullshit…”

  Olivia looked up then and saw he was shaking his head, “I didn’t mean to say that—I mean—those words …” He feared he might actually be blushing.

  But then he felt her body sag against his and he breathed easier and smiled. “But since your old man horsewhipped me, I have done a whole lot of growing up. I moved out of my folks’ house and I been working on my own. I got me a real pretty little house and a car and I aim to take very good care of your lovely daughter. I aim to marry her, Miz Olivia. And I haven’t wanted to marry anybody in my life before.” Then, with his natural arrogant charm restored in full measure, he turned her toward him and cupped her chin in his hand, raising her face so she had to meet his eyes. When she did and her weary brown eyes met his fire-lit blue ones, she had an instant awareness of his virility and for a split second of her own sexuality. She felt a sensation in the pit of her stomach she had not experienced since she was a girl and a whole passel of unseemly memories assailed her. With a desperate need to disassociate herself from such improper thoughts, she cast her eyes down, but then she was looking at his muscular young body and that gave her even less peace. So she closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Won’t make a bit a difference to Rose Sharon’s Papa. He’s a hard man and he’s got his notions and ain’t nobody ever changed his mind yet. Leastways, nobody I ever heard about. Rose Sharon should of knowed better than to encourage you!” Her eyes flashed wide open for the first time then and looked into his and he saw the dispirited hopelessness of a lifetime of submission and resignation in them. What he wanted to do in that moment was grab her up tight and love her like a woman yearns to be loved. But that was an outrageous idea considering who she was, so he let go of her arms and she turned back to the chicken.

  By then she was nervous, and she kept rubbing her bloody hands on her apron, wiping them again and again, while her heart pounded and tears of frustration threatened to gush down her cheeks. “What kind of a devil does this boy have to make me get them kind of feelin’s?” she wondered. And for the first time she understood why all those women had always been after him. He really knew how to make a woman feel loved.

  And then a smile began to tremble on her lips and she took a chance and looked at him again. “I reckon he can’t stop Rose Sharon from marryin’ you though, lessen he chains her to the wall. She’s always had a mind of her own. You’re gonna find out she’s just about as stubborn as her Pa is,” and then her eyes crinkled and some of the years went away. “But I wonder if you don’t know that already?” And while their eyes studied and came to understand each other she couldn’t help thinking how much Rose was going to enjoy being loved by a man like Jack Nash and recalling her own marital experience at the tender age of 14 as at best dull and at worst a repelling duty, she rejoiced at her youngest daughter’s good fortune.

  Jack called Rose’s name then and she opened the screen door and looked in at him. “I don’t want to do no more talkin’, Jack. Let’s just go on.”

  But he motioned her back inside and she came reluctantly to stand in front of him.

  “Your Mama wants a farewell hug.”

  And though Olivia was hardly a hugging woman, she took a step closer and put her arms around her young daughter but just to please Jack, and Rose hugged her in return for the same reason.

  Jack had an arm on each woman’s shoulder squeezing them together and feeling a great deal of satisfaction at having brought a peaceable end to the encounter; he was grinning when he bent to give Rose a kiss on her cheek and then he squeezed them again.

  “Well, you got my blessin’, Rose.” Mama had tears in her eyes, and the boys who had been scattered around the room seemed drawn suddenly as if by a magnet to crowd together around her. In those few moments an eerie blue silence descended and for a while all of them clung together as if enchanted—until something occurred to Olivia and she squeezed her daughter’s hand, “But what about your diploma? You get it in just a few days and you made such good grades...” Jack feared a change of mind coming—maybe even from Rose herself who had not as yet given a moment’s consideration to what she might be giving up by running away with him. Time stopped and his attention instantly focused on finding an argument to convince her she really didn’t need a diploma while everybody’s eyes turned expectantly to Rose Sharon.

  Then, too late, they heard the sound of boots on the porch and the squeal of the hinges when the screen door swung open.

  Art Saylor stood there in the doorway appraising the situation and instead of letting the screen door slam shut, he pushed it wide open and stepped to one side.

  “This here door is open boy, and I’m gonna stand right here and hold it that way so’s you can walk outta here. And then you’d best run quick as you can to that automobile out yonder in the lane and drive like a bat outta hell back to wherever it was you came from.”

  When nobody moved he spoke again. “I’m speakin’ to you, Jack Nash. I’m warnin’ you to get your heathen ass off my property! You ain’t wanted here!”

  Olly instinctively moved backward, freeing herself from Jack’s arm, and the three boys moved along with her, still magnetized by her knees.

  Rose’s first reaction was fear, but that passed quickly and she rushed to gain control of the situation.

  “Jack is goin’, Papa, and I am goin’ with him. We just come to say we was leavin’. We are gettin’ married!” She t
ook Jack’s hand and pulled him along with her as she crossed to the door. When she passed her father she held out her left hand and shoved the ring under his nose. “There’s no use you sayin’ we can or we cain’t. We don’t care squash blossoms if you mind or don’t mind. We love each other and it’s all the same as done!” She moved on out the door and Jack, grinning and cocking his head in Art’s direction, followed directly behind her. “Goodbye, Papa,” she said without looking back. “I wish you coulda been happy for me.”

  Art Saylor was angrier than he had ever been in his life. Angrier even than when he’d laid the leather to Jack’s back to punish him for taking liberties with Rose Sharon. He fumed and blustered and turned to look at Olly who cringed behind him; she was hardly more than a dark shape with the bright sunshine behind her and the younguns stacked around her like cordwood. “Why didn’t you stop her?” he hollered and his voice had a crackle of despair in it. But when he got no answer his face screwed up with rage and he kicked open the screen door and roared out at them. “I’m gonna kill you, you son of a bitch, if my baby girl ain’t back up these steps in half a minute.” And over his shoulder he motioned to Olly. “Get me my gun, Woman!”

  He said it three times but Olly just stood there staring at him—at his long, thin, sun-burned body with its sharp bones poking against his baggy overalls. At his yellowish-gray hair lying in damp and straggly wisps along his neck. And when he turned to see what was taking her so long, she looked at those cold, pale, watery eyes above a thin-lipped mouth that only barked harsh orders to her or preached hell and damnation at her and she shuddered.

  Then she heard the automobile engine start up and heard it speed away, and her exhausted body sank down onto a kitchen chair. A memory of that moment when Jack Nash had touched her chin and looked into her heart flickered across her mind and she couldn’t help smiling. Rose Sharon was going to know what it felt like to be a woman all right, being loved by a man like that one—being married to Jack Nash and having his babies.

  She sighed and realized she was smiling. “Get your own gun, old man,” she said softly. “And while you’re about it, why don’t you just go ahead and shoot yourself!”

  Rose was smiling too now, just remembering it. Two years ago, in the early spring, her brothers the twins Andrew and Joseph, big strapping boys who looked older than their 17 years, came to Chicago with some buddies looking for work. They spent several hours with her and Jack and related what had occurred in the farmhouse after she and Jack had driven away, and everybody had a good laugh over Papa’s comeuppance. But Rose felt sorrow too, for Mama, who had to put up with her husband’s meanness all of her life and never even had anybody to complain to. As for her brothers, they weren’t long in Chicago—they quickly got homesick for the South and hopped a freight headed in that direction. The last Rose heard, they were working in Tennessee.

  March 1928

  As for her own marriage, being the wife of Jack Nash was just about as pleasant a thing as going to heaven without having to die first. Anyway, that was how Rose felt about it.

  He moved her to Maysfield, which was just far enough away from her family to suit both of them and where he was working in Raymond Delaney’s Sawmill and Lumberyard. And it was plain to Rose the first time she met Mister Delaney that he thought Jack was the best thing that ever happened to that burg. “Jack keeps everybody up on their toes trying to keep step with him,” he told her with a sincere nod of his head. “That boy’s the hardest workin’ youngster ever set foot on this property.” And then he went on to tell her how he treated every customer as if he were the only one they ever sold anything to. “It’s gettin’ so they won’t do business with anybody but that tall, good-lookin’ dark-haired kid ... That’s what they tell us when they walk on the lot. ‘I want that tall good-lookin’ dark-haired kid to wait on us’.” And then he grinned and winked at her. “That boy’s got charm!” he said and then he leaned his head down to hers and spoke in a loud whisper, “That boy could charm the devil right out of his pitchfork, M’am. And that’s the truth. And you can take whatever Ole Ray tells you as gospel!”

  He just couldn’t stop bragging on Jack, and pretty soon Rose was all puffed up with pride. It was an entirely different world over here in Buck County where people had an altogether different opinion of Jack Nash. Here he was treated with respect and looked on as honorable, which he surely deserved to be. The only thing Mister Delaney said to her that even got close to how people slandered him back home was that an awful lot of ladies had started coming in with their husbands to pick out their lumber. And he laughed when he said it, like he knew they just came in to get a look at Jack. Truth be told, in Raymond Delaney’s opinion, it was a great bit of luck to have hired him, and amusing to boot!

  At home that night when she told Jack how Mister Delaney had bragged on him, he grinned real big and pulled her down onto his lap. “Well, Sugar, that man just wastes more time givin’ compliments! He couldn’t say enough about my sweet little wife either! ‘She’s got the prettiest color hair I ever saw,’ he says, and all day he’s asking this fella and that, ‘Did you see the color of her eyes? They’re like shiny new pennies,’ he says, ‘hidin’ behind the longest curly black eyelashes I ever saw!” And then Jack kissed her. “I may end up havin’ to fight him for you, Rose Sharon.”

  But Rose knew he wasn’t serious about that. The one thing she knew for certain was Jack Nash was way too sure of himself and his way with women to ever get jealous. When some man looked at her with admiration or even with lust in his eyes, Jack just stuck out his chest and grinned. Jack Nash proudly considered their leering a compliment to his taste in women.

  And she had come to know that Jack liked the way she looked, too. That probably had more to do with his marrying her than anything, although she was aware that the fire of her character and her down-to-earth sense of humor and bull-headed perseverance helped seduce him. But to a man with Jack Nash’s appreciation and love for women, looks made a mighty big difference when choosing the one he would spend his life with. He told her himself that of all the women and girls he’d loved, and he assured her there weren’t anywhere near as many as he was renowned for, Rose was the only one who crept into his dreams afterwards. And the only one he couldn’t just put aside and forget. Ten months away from her had only made that fact more evident and in the end he had to return, in spite of the humiliation of their last encounter. He admitted he was even fearful she might not want him anymore and he’d been jubilant enough to shout “Hallelujah” when she said yes, except he didn’t want to mislead her into thinking he’d “got religion.” And they laughed a long time about that.

  Jack appreciated the fact that she went away with him, even though it got her disowned by her Daddy and made her an outcast to all her family. There was no doubt in his mind that Rose Sharon Saylor was in love with him so he drove her away to Maysfield that afternoon and got a justice of the peace right there in town to make everything legal. Then he took her to the little one-bedroom house he was renting and that was where they spent their first night together. Rose liked to relive that night over and over in her memory and she could recall every single minute of it to this day. Nothing before or since had been as scary or as awesome or had affected her as profoundly. It was as if Jack Nash had only one purpose in life and that was to love her. That was how he made it seem anyway, and that appeared to remain his purpose even after all these years. Rose knew she was the luckiest woman in the world!

  March 11, 1928

  The next morning he took her to a café for breakfast and then to that fine ladies-wear store in town—Miss Anna’s, where he told her to pick out the prettiest dress they had and never mind the cost. And that was what she did. But she didn’t dare look at the price tag because she knew she’d probably faint if she saw what it said. It was plain enough that the store was expensive. Rose picked out several dresses, and the saleslady led her away to a room in the back with a curtain instead of a door and helped her try them on.


  She didn’t bother to go out and show them to Jack, though, except for the blue silk (that was what the lady told her it was), which she fell in love with the instant it touched her skin. The material was kind of thin and it had its own special undergarment built right in and that was made of a slinky material you couldn’t see through. The entire thing was as soft and light as moonlight and that was what the color brought to her mind. A pale light blue that was the color of moonlight. Jack’s sky-colored eyes got real big when he watched her walk up from the back of the shop and his smile came on like the sunrise. “Dammit, girl” he said in a low voice when she got close enough for him to take hold of, and he slipped his arm around her and raised her up on her tiptoes in a big hug, “I swear you look good enough to eat!” And then he looked over at the saleslady. “We’ll take this one and don’t worry about a box. She’ll wear it home.”

  By then a bunch of customers were standing around gawking at them, and Rose had started to blush. But Jack just gave them all a friendly grin and walked her over to the counter, where he asked the saleslady to pick out a set of her best undergarments and make sure they were in Rose’s exact size. Then he leaned across the counter and whispered something to the woman, who smiled and led Rose back to the room with the curtain door where she helped her out of the dress so she could slip into the underwear. And just before he paid for everything he told her to add a pair of silk stockings—even down to the garters, and “some high-heeled dancin’ slippers” to the list.

  That was the best time Rose ever had in a dress shop. Truth be told, it was the first time she’d ever set foot in one but it wasn’t the last. Jack bought her a new dress just about every payday after that but never another one so special. And once they were out of that store, he put her into his car and as they were driving away, he insisted she put on the stockings and dancin’ slippers right there in the car while he drove her all the way to Jackson. It was just a little honeymoon present, he told her, and while they were sightseeing they ran across a portrait studio and impulsively, Jack took her hand and they went inside. With his winning ways, he talked the photographer into taking their picture right then and there and that was how that portrait in the oval tin frame, her most treasured possession, came about.