At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  There was a silence. She was finished. The quiet rang loudly in the small living room. The television’s buzz accentuated more than eradicated it.

  She reached into her purse and brought out the last thing she had. She handed it to Rosalie and saw her unwrap it, saw her gaze at the face of Jesus the good shepherd, saw her turn over the plaque and read the back. Her eyes filled up with tears again.

  Annie rose up, suddenly wanting to be out of this place, this sad, sad place. Rosalie didn’t follow her to the door. She stayed on the sagging couch, but after a moment she spoke.

  “Okay,” she said, and that was all.

  Annie nodded and she felt a sudden kinship with her. The kinship of a love that hadn’t gone quite far enough. She took one more look at the bright face in the picture, all that remained of Kelly’s warm flesh, her laughter, her cartwheels and sass. “I’m sorry about your daughter,” she said.

  Forty-three

  It was a moving, tender piece and painted the picture of a young girl’s life as well as any she’d ever written. The ending was her favorite part.

  Kelly Bright’s mother wanted people to know about her life, not only her death. How she loved a good joke and had a collection of red clown noses and whoopee cushions. That she’d once gone along on one of her uncle’s dates, hidden in the backseat, jumping out at a tender moment.

  She loved to French braid her hair, and she collected pretty rocks. “She had a rock from every place we’d ever been,” her mother said.

  She had different tastes in music than most children her age. She loved Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, but her film collection tended mostly toward Veggie Tales.

  She liked cooking. Her sister said she made the best pancakes she’d ever eaten. She sewed a dress once but wouldn’t wear it because the collar was crooked.

  She went to church. She took her brother and sister and held out hope for her mom and dad. Pastor Jordan Abrams remembers her as a child whose heart was soft. “She told me the Lord had spoken to her,” he said, “and told her that all her family would come to the Lord.” He still hopes that prayer will be answered and takes heart that Kelly’s mother called him to her daughter’s bedside just before the end.

  Those last hours were sweet. Her forehead was anointed with oil by her pastor, and a small gathering of family and friends prayed for her healing. Sometime that evening their prayer was answered as Kelly’s spirit slipped free of the body that had so long encumbered it.

  “We’ll see her again,” Pastor Abrams said.

  “She’s at home now,” Kelly’s mother said. “She can finally be at peace.”

  Annie was technically without an employer, but she offered the story to the Los Angeles Times, and they consented to having it run in the Knoxville Statesman Review and the Varner’s Grove Gazette. As it turned out, the Associated Press picked it up. It ran on the wire, and most of America read about Kelly Bright’s short life over their Sunday morning breakfast.

  She delayed her return to Seattle until after the funeral. She called Jason Niles, who was understanding. Would another week give her time to settle her affairs? Of course, she assured him, and herself. She felt a tension that she was sure would be relieved when she was gone, when everything was over.

  At the funeral Annie stood in the back beside Sam. She watched as Jordan Abrams prayed and preached, telling people about Jesus, as Kelly would have wanted. When it was over, she watched perhaps the most courageous thing she’d ever seen, for Sam left her side and walked past the knotted crowds toward Rosalie, stood before her, and bowed his head. She couldn’t hear what was said, but she saw Rosalie reach out her hand and grip his. She rose, he bent, and the two ended in a tight embrace. Cameras flashed, and that picture appeared along with Kelly’s profile.

  Forgiveness Reigns at Tennessee Girl’s Funeral ran the headline in the Los Angeles Times.

  They drove home from the cemetery without speaking. She went into her father’s house and fell into bed, exhausted.

  ****

  Sam didn’t know how long he stayed out on the ridgetop praying that evening after the funeral. It was hot and dry and still as the sun set. The thunder beat every few minutes or so, a bass drum to his cries. And he did cry out. The small valley echoed with his voice, raised in lament and grief.

  The winds began slowly, a breeze of warm air ruffling his hair and the leaves on the trees, but soon they picked up intensity and dropped in temperature, and by the time he opened his eyes, they had become great whipping gusts. He searched the dark sky as the wind swept his bare arms.

  He felt a chill as familiar words occurred to him, and he thought of the prophet Elijah praying for rain. “I see a cloud as small as a man’s hand,” he murmured aloud, for there it was, that cloud, and as he watched, the sky swirled around him, and the stars disappeared under their blanketing. More scuttled across until the sky was full of the soaked sponges.

  He watched in awe, breath held, and one great spattering drop landed on his face, then another on the rocks at his feet, and then there was another and another and then too many to count.

  The rains had come.

  He bowed his head then and bent his will before the God who had made him, who was still making him. Who had given and who had taken away. He prayed again and quoted the words of Job. He asked forgiveness for his arrogance and bitterness. “You do all things well,” he finally said, his voice hoarse and ragged but full of the faith he had thought he would never feel again. “Thank you, God,” he said softly. His hands fell down to his sides, and he raised his face, and it became wet with the pelting merciful rain as well as his salty tears.

  It rained for four days and five nights. Not a vicious pounding gully washer, but a steady, heavy downpour that drummed on the tin-roofed farmhouses, soaked through the matted grass and dusty, cracked soil, filled the underground aquifers and lakes. It caused the rivers and creeks to rush again, swirling white and foamy over their rocky, desolate beds. It greened the plants and the flowers and trees and washed the dusty haze from the air. It caused the springs to shoot forth again with their pure, sweet water.

  ****

  Annie never dreamed. She had not dreamed in years, at least nothing that remained in the morning for examination. But on the last night of the rains she dreamed, a vivid Technicolor drama of light and sound. She was walking, and suddenly there was a little house, and it looked a bit like Grandma Mamie’s, she realized, and all around and inside it were the things that Margaret had loved. The scenes changed quickly, one after another.

  There was the slide at the park. The one Margaret insisted on sliding down alone. “She’s like her mother,” Sam would say, shaking his head, walking along the side, never more than an arm’s length away. There was her sandbox with her bucket and pails and muffin tins and spoons. Then she saw the kitchen stool where Margaret had helped her make whatever she was cooking. The tree swing. The playhouse. Her pink bed. Her dolls and toys. All of her things were in this place. Everything she loved. Everything she would need to make it home.

  And then the scene changed in that way dreams do, and it was as if Annie was on the outside of a window looking in, and there she was, her own Margaret, fuzzy red hair a cloud around her face, sitting at a familiar oak table playing with buttons. The quart jar of them that Grandma Mamie had kept, and they were spilled out onto the table. She saw Grandma Mamie herself, then, standing at the stove behind Margaret, and she saw her own mother with them both. They were talking and laughing, and though she could hear the sound of their voices, she couldn’t make out their words.

  Then the warm little scene shifted again, and she was inside. Grandma and Mama were gone, but Someone else had come. There were just the two of them and Margaret. Annie never saw His face. Just His hands as he pointed toward Margaret. “Give her to me,” He said gently to Annie, and she watched as she herself reached down. She picked up her daughter, hugged her sweet neck, felt those soft lips brush her cheek. She held her tightly for a moment, feeling he
r breath, the warmth of her skin. She pressed her face against Margaret’s soft cheek and said the good-bye she had never been allowed. And then she handed her daughter to Him. Margaret smiled at Him and held out her arms, and as He reached across to receive her, Annie could see the scars on His palms.

  She was back outside then, looking in, and she wept because she couldn’t be with Margaret any longer. For she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to do more than watch and this would be the one last glance. She pressed her hands against the glass and cried, but then a voice whispered to her, and she had to stop her sobs to hear it.

  “She’s safe with me,” He said.

  She woke up slowly. And this waking was different than the others. She woke without the usual heaviness, without the half-remembered darkness creeping over her mind. She shuddered from crying in her dream. It was done now, she realized, the tears coming afresh. Her daughter was gone. Margaret wasn’t coming back. Of course she had known that, but now it felt as if that truth had worked its way from her head down to her heart, felt, in fact, as if a great barrier had been removed between those two, as if for the first time in many years her thoughts and heart could speak.

  She cried a little more then, but they were clean tears, and inside she felt as if they cleansed rather than burned. When she was finished, she got up and washed her face and dried her eyes. She dressed quietly, as if preparing for a solemn occasion.

  She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. The rains had stopped, but they had done their work. It was a fine Carolina morning, and oh, how she had missed them. She had missed the creeping moisture in the tall grass. The song of the birds in the stillness of the woods. The rustle of the breeze through the pines. The tall rustling stalks of corn and the plump curling tendrils of the cabbage. She walked for a moment, crunched along the gravel, and surveyed the scenes of her childhood. The sheep pasture, the garden, the cornfield, the creek. She walked along the road for a bit, and the red dirt was moist under her feet. It had been stuck in her throat for these last long years—the dust of home. She had stayed away, but He had come after her, and suddenly music played in her mind, the high sweet voice of invitation.

  Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.

  She stopped, listened, and in her mind’s eye she could see Someone standing so far away she could barely make out His figure. Who knew how long He had been standing there, patiently waiting? But instead of the stern, harsh, crossed-arm figure she had imagined, she caught a glimpse of His face now, and it was longing, loving, yearning for her to return to Him.

  Come home, come home. Ye who are weary, come home.

  And she realized now that she had been weary. Oh, so weary. She had been weary of trying to stay a step ahead of sorrow and regret, and she had finally discovered the truth—the only way to be free of it was to let it catch her.

  Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling—calling, “O sinner, come home.”

  Oh, with what tenderness He had called her name. He hadn’t pretended He didn’t see her sin, her hatred and futile bitterness, but He had urged her to bring it all home. To come dragging it behind her. To let Him take it away. How ruthlessly He had caught at her heart and kept pulling.

  She walked toward the edge of the woods and stopped. She felt the cool breeze ruffle her hair. Droplets of rain were still set on the leaves and wild flowers, glittering like diamonds in the bright morning sun. A blue jay swooped through the sky, and she remembered what He had said. I will refresh the weary. And she realized that although she was surrounded by pieces yet needing to be woven together, it was Truth. She had been weary, but she was refreshed, and she was alive. She had been given this day, this fine morning, this arching, dew-struck container of hope. She was refreshed, and she heard His promise whisper there, just inside her ear. I will satisfy the faint.

  She prayed then, as she had not prayed in years, and when she was finished, she got into her car and drove fast, feeling as if something that had been binding her had been snapped. She arrived. She parked the car.

  She passed the blooming tree, climbed the steps, turned the knob, and pushed open the door. It smelled musty and closed off compared to the scoured air she’d left outside. She walked straight to Margaret’s room. She opened the door and stepped in and looked around, and as she stood there, surrounded by her daughter’s toys, her blankets, her clothes, all the accoutrements of her brief life, for once she was not struck with hopelessness and grief, but instead she felt a settled peace, an acceptance of what was.

  She wept more tears for the child she loved. She would always love her, would she not? For what mother ever forgot her child? But she felt somewhere deep within her a seed stirring, a strong curling tendril of hope thrusting up through the breaks in her heart.

  She left the door open as she went out, and as she passed once more through the hallways and rooms of this place, it suddenly seemed small, much smaller than she remembered, and she realized it was because it was empty, filled only with objects, and warm, living, breathing people in a room make it larger somehow.

  She stepped out onto the porch, and then he was there, standing quietly, as if he’d been waiting for her. She went to him, she took his hands in her own, and she spoke the words that had been pressing to find their way out for all these many years.

  “I love you,” she said to this man, to her husband. “I want to come home again.”

  Forty-four

  Elijah cleared his throat as he made his way across Mary’s front lawn. The grass was green and moist. The flowers and shrubs had grown an inch or two in the past few days, it seemed. Everything was thriving, drinking in the refreshing rains. He tapped lightly at the front door, but no one answered. He opened it gently and stepped inside. He heard voices and called out.

  “We’re in here,” Mary called back from the kitchen. “Come in!”

  He came into the room and looked around. Mary and Annie and Sam sat around the kitchen table, and in spite of the wads of used tissue before them, he knew at once that something was different. Their faces fairly shone, all three of them, and he felt a thrust of joy. He made a pretext of looking for a coffee filter, helped himself to one, then left them alone. It was hours before he had a chance to be alone with Mary.

  He found her still in the kitchen after Annie and Sam left, looking happy if a little stunned.

  “God has done a mighty work here today,” he observed quietly.

  “We talked about it all,” Mary said, her voice full of awe. “We cried and we prayed and we all forgave one another,” she said, and he saw peace on her face where there had once been torment.

  “I’m so glad,” he said simply.

  She nodded, still seeming amazed. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, “did you want to talk to me about something?”

  “Perhaps now is not the time for me to speak,” he said. He ducked his head and looked down at his shoes, and when he looked up he could see a little strain back on her face, and he wondered if it was because she knew what he would say. If she did not want him to say it.

  “No. Please go ahead,” she said, and her voice was calm and settled.

  He took a deep breath. “Mary, I’ve come to a decision,” he said, and he thought about the hours he’d spent in prayer and waiting. “I feel the Lord has spoken very clearly to me about what He wants, through circumstances, His Word, and my own desires.”

  She nodded but did not speak. He shook his head. He sounded as if he were teaching a Sunday school class. This was not what he wanted to say.

  “The Baptists have offered me a position at their mission hospital in Uganda.”

  Her face blanched pale.

  “I’m not going to take it,” he said quickly.

  She stared.

  “I’m staying here in Gilead Springs. Carl has asked me to help him with his practice. I’ve applied for my North Carolina medical license. We’re going to see about g
etting a program started with the medical school in Asheville to have residents rotate through a country practice, to learn how to do home visits and give old-time patient care. I’ve been to Asheville to see about it. It will generate a little income and be good all the way around.”

  Her mouth opened slightly. She closed it.

  He shook his head and cleared his throat. He did not want to talk about jobs and doctors. He reached into his pocket. He set the small velvet box on the table. “Do you remember that?” he asked, opening up the lid. He was almost afraid to look at her face, but he did.

  She nodded and her eyes filled with tears, for she had given it back to him on that night so long ago when he had followed the Lord to Africa. But now he was following the Lord on a new adventure, and he felt just as sure that he was on the right path now as he had then. There was only one thing of which he was not certain.

  “Mary Ellen,” he said, and he felt as stirred up and frightened as he’d ever been in his life as he spoke. “Will you marry me?” he asked, speaking those words for the second time in his life.

  He held his breath, waiting. And for the second time in his life, he received the same answer.

  ****

  Annie sat in the car with Sam outside Papa and Diane’s, and she felt for all the world like a teenager again. She had no doubt that Papa was in there peering out the curtain and that Diane was telling him to sit down as she knitted and smiled.

  “I guess we have some plans to make,” Sam said, shifting to turn toward her in the car. She looked carefully at his face, but she saw no hint of pride or arrogance, no indication that the agenda was already set. His face was calm and quiet. He was waiting for her to answer.

  She nodded. “Yes, we do.”

  “Melvin spoke with Kelly’s parents’ attorneys today,” Sam said. “They’ve agreed to the settlement. The insurance will send them a check.”