Hidden Mercies

by Serena B. Miller

  In addition to bringing about some strength and flexibility, there was a deep emotional comfort in engaging in this daily routine. The flicker of joy he saw in his father’s eyes each morning when he arrived, always accompanied with a bit of gentle teasing about his Englisch-ness.

  There was comfort in the sounds, sights, and smells of this old barn that had played such a large part in his childhood. In this familiar place, the ultravigilance he had developed in the Middle East lessened. It was unimaginable, even to his touchy subconscious, that an enemy would want to secrete an explosive device in this place.

  Jeremiah encouraged Tom in his efforts to regain his strength and seemed to take a great deal of personal satisfaction out of every small milestone, measured by how much milk was in the bucket when they finished each morning. Tom had no illusions about being any real help, but he appreciated the old man’s enthusiasm.

  After whatever other light chores he could help his father with, he would walk back, stopping long enough to purchase yet another quart jar of Claire’s tomato juice. To make sure he had a good supply, the girls had stopped putting it on the shelves of their little store. Now Maddy went down into the cool cellar and brought up a fresh jar for him every morning.

  As he rested on Claire’s porch steps with a quart jar of that ruby-red liquid in his hand, it felt like he was drinking pure sunshine and that his body had been ravenous for it. Amy, always happy for company, would show him her latest creation and would prattle on about her small world. Talking to Amy always left him smiling. It was impossible not to love that little girl.

  A bonus to this routine was that Claire would frequently be employed in some outdoor chore at that time of the morning, when it was still cool. She would be sweeping off the porch, or hoeing in her vegetable garden, or hanging up wet clothes. She would inquire about his health or ask about Jeremiah. Then he would find out some small snippet about her plans for the day. She would mention the new dress material she planned on sewing up for one of the girls or a new recipe she’d tried at the house of a friend that she was going to try out. He felt honored the morning that she chose to confide her worries about her sister’s plight. From what he could tell, it appeared that Claire was pretty much singlehandedly keeping that family in groceries, while Henry stayed away more and more.

  He did not tell her about having tried to follow Henry that day, but he did resolve to find reasons to linger around Lehman’s Hardware a little more often. He also resolved to keep his gas tank filled so that he could follow Henry all the way to wherever the destination was that was destroying him and his family.

  Each afternoon, he spent long hours reading from Levi’s copious library, interspersed with more walks. Sometimes he would wander over to Levi and Grace’s. They were seldom around during the day, but Elizabeth was always up for a visit. It was good to have one person with whom he could talk freely about the experience of being around his father and Claire under these circumstances. Elizabeth continued to counsel caution. She said that God would let him know when the time was right.

  He confided to Elizabeth about his unexpected windfall, and how it worried him that he could think of nothing he wanted to buy or do with it. He was afraid it was another symptom of that PTSD diagnosis the doctors had been determined to pin on him. She told him there was a good chance the Lord had something else in mind for that money and to wait until God showed him a purpose. This thought appealed to him and was a relief.

  He frequently stopped to talk to old Flora. She had grown to depend on an apple always being in his pocket and would come to the fence to get a treat and a good scratching behind her ears. Flora was definitely showing her age. Claire was aware of this and had begun hiring a driver more and more often.

  He found great comfort in the company of Claire’s animals. The soft clucking of the hens as they sat on their nests eased something in his chest. Like Albert, he had been in charge of the chickens and eggs when he was young. One of the barn cats had a litter of kittens. He had never liked cats all that well, but in this new quiet in which he was living—this unhurried cocoon of time—he allowed himself to sit in the barn for hours, simply watching and enjoying the antics of those kittens tumbling and playing about.

  Most days were good, though some days were a struggle. But one overcast day, when every bad thing he’d experienced or seen in the Middle East was jockeying for position in his mind, God sent him a gift.

  He was sitting on the steps of his apartment that evening, watching the barn swallows flit and glide—ever the accomplished aerial acrobats—when he saw a dog lurking on the edge of the field.

  The dog was larger than a German shepherd and it had matted, shaggy white fur.

  He looked at the dog, and the dog looked at him.

  “Are you lost, boy?” he said.

  The dog took a few tentative steps toward him, then lost heart and retreated.

  “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The dog whined and came a few steps closer, head down, its tail swishing back and forth.

  Even though it was almost dusk, he could tell that the animal was pretty beat up. As it drew closer, he could see that it was male and had been in several dogfights.

  “Whatsa matter, Rocky,” he said, thinking of the multiple fight scenes when Sylvester Stallone was the underdog and came out swinging. “You lose a few?”

  The dog had gotten down on its belly now, and was crawling slowly toward him. It didn’t take someone who was fluent in dog body language to see that it was afraid to trust, but its need to be petted, to have human contact, was even greater than its fear. There were scars above its eye and several on its neck and body.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Rocky.” He held his hand out, palm up.

  He held his hand out for a long time until the dog screwed up its courage, raised its head, gave his hand a sniff, and then gently licked it. The touch of its tongue was so quick, so light, he could barely feel it—but it was there. They were friends. He gently chucked it under the chin.

  “You’re a good dog, aren’t you, buddy?”

  At that moment, it did something he’d never seen a dog do before in his life—it stood, came close, and laid its head in his lap, sideways, and then closed its eyes.

  It was such a trusting, tender thing to do, like a tired child lying its head in the lap of a trusted adult.

  The gesture brought a lump to his throat. He identified with the dog. He was pretty beat up himself, and some days it felt like he’d crawled on his belly all the way to Holmes County, hoping to have contact with gentle people who would treat him well.

  For a few minutes, they sat like that, on the bottom step, dog and man, both battle scarred and weary. He smoothed his hand over the dog’s matted hair, and the animal gave a deep sigh of contentment as though he knew he was finally home.

  As he ran his hands down over its sides, he could feel the ribs. The long hair hid an emaciated body. Rocky was not well fed. There was no dog food here, but he did have a package of hot dogs.

  “You hungry, Rocky?”

  The dog lifted his head and looked at him with such anticipation, he would have sworn the animal understood exactly what he’d said.

  He made his way up the stairs with Rocky at his heels.

  “Sorry, buddy. You can’t come in with me, but I’ll be right back out.” The animal immediately sat down on the small landing outside the door. Tom came back out and fed hot dogs to him one by one.

  After eating eight all-beef hot dogs, Rocky lay down on the landing and fell asleep. Tom went to bed, hoping the white dog would still be there when he got up in the morning. He could use a good friend, and unless he was mistaken, Rocky could use a good friend, too.

  • • •

  It was growing dark and Claire had already put the smaller children to bed. Maddy had gone to a singing with some friends, Albert and Sarah were sound asleep, as was Amy. Jesse was reading under the covers with a flashlight and thought she didn’t know. His
thirst for knowledge was as great as his older brother Levi’s.

  She walked out onto the porch, intending to sit on the swing for a few minutes. Since the weather had gotten warmer, it had become her habit to say her nightly prayers out there. She found that praying in bed after a hard day of work was too conducive to falling asleep!

  She’d been sitting there in the shadow of a trellis of morning glory vines when Tom walked down the stairway of his apartment and sat down on the bottom step. She didn’t move for fear he would see her. Chatting with him outdoors in broad daylight with the children running about was one thing. A conversation with him in the dark was entirely too intimate an act, and she did not want to be put in the position of pointing that out to him.

  Then she saw the stray dog tentatively coming out of the shadows. She sat, transfixed, as Tom gently encouraged it to come to him. She watched as the dog crawled on its belly to him. Watched Tom coax it toward him. Tears sprang to her eyes when she saw it lay its head trustingly in his lap. She held her breath, hoping he would not frighten it away. Then she let it out when she saw him gently pet it, talking to it softly. She smiled when she saw him feeding it hot dogs.

  The dog would obviously be a permanent inhabitant now. She supposed some people in her position would insist that her renter get rid of the dog—but she didn’t feel that way. The healer in her saw the probability of Tom and the stray dog finding solace in each other.

  It was her opinion that you could tell a lot about a man by how he treated an animal. Her trust ratcheted up a couple notches when she saw Tom responding so gently to the stray. It bothered her that he was a soldier—a profession of which she heartily disapproved—but there was a lot of goodness in that man’s heart.

  She watched as Tom went back into his apartment, and she stayed put until the light went out. At that point she knew it was safe to get up and go inside her house without him thinking she’d been deliberately spying on him.

  • • •

  “You decided to stay, did you, boy?” Tom was delighted when he opened the door the next morning. Rocky was lying so close to the screen door that Tom had to nudge it to get the dog to move.

  Even though his nudge was gentle, Rocky was up like a shot, backing into the corner of the small porch, looking at him with worried eyes.

  Tom came outside, sat down on the top steps, and whistled a soft invitation. Rocky wagged his tail and came close enough for Tom to ruffle the fur on top of the dog’s head.

  “Did you sleep good, boy?” he said. “Did those hot dogs lie okay on your stomach? If I’d eaten a whole package for supper, I’d have been up half the night.”

  He could almost swear that Rocky grinned at him.

  “Come here,” Tom said, gently pulling the dog closer. “Let me take a closer look at you.

  “You’re pretty beat up, aren’t you, fella? Did someone make you do this? You don’t seem to be the kind of animal that would deliberately pick a fight with another dog.”

  Rocky whined softly and lay down, his muzzle on his paws.

  His best guess was that there were some illegal dogfights going on somewhere in the state and Rocky had managed to get loose.

  The thoughts of forcing dogs to fight one another made Tom’s stomach turn, but he knew it happened.

  That one wound on the back of his neck needed to be looked at. A dog could lick a wound on its body and keep it clean enough to heal, but Rocky couldn’t reach this one.

  Tom remembered the B&W ointment his father had given him. He’d been rubbing it into his own scars and—though it might be wishful thinking on his part—he thought it was helping.

  “Stay right where you are, buddy.” Tom rose and went into the apartment.

  He didn’t have any more hot dogs, but he did have some leftover bacon grease, which he mixed in with a bit of leftover cooked oatmeal. Then he broke a couple raw eggs over it, poured in some milk, and gave it all a good stir. It wasn’t gourmet, but it would feed the hollow inside of Rocky long enough to let him go for the morning milking and then to the store for dog food.

  Rocky didn’t complain about the unusual meal set before him, he just gobbled it up. Then came the tricky part—trying to smear the B&W ointment on Rocky’s open wound.

  He let the dog smell the ointment, then he let it watch him put a dab on his own neck.

  “See?” he said. “Good stuff.”

  Rocky cocked his head, watching him come closer with a dollop of ointment on his fingers.

  It took time, and a lot of softly spoken encouraging words, but Tom did manage to cover the wound with the healing ointment without Rocky sinking his teeth into his arm, a risk Tom knew he was taking with a strange dog.

  He started back inside to wash off his hands, and Rocky stuck his nose in the door as though expecting an invitation.

  Tom hesitated. It wasn’t that he minded having a dog in the apartment, but he wasn’t sure Claire would approve. After all, it was her property. He glanced over at her house and saw that the lamps were already lit in the kitchen. Claire was an early riser, too.

  “Let’s wait a bit on that, Rocky.” He blocked Rocky’s entrance. “I think I need to talk to the lady who owns this place first.”

  Rocky sat down on his haunches and stared through the screen door until Tom had washed off his hands, gathered his car keys and wallet, and came back outside.

  “Gotta go introduce you to Claire and see if you can stay, buddy,” he said as he walked across the driveway to Claire’s kitchen door.

  He had no idea what he would do with the dog if she said no.

  She had a spatula in her hand when she came to the door. She was dressed for the day, with her prayer Kapp already firmly in place.

  “Good morning, Claire,” he said. “I wanted to ask if you’d mind if I keep this stray?”

  Claire came out onto the porch and took a good look at the dog.

  “The poor thing has seen better days.”

  “I’m hoping I can rectify that.”

  “He will need a good bath.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I don’t want any fleas in the apartment.”

  “I’ll get a flea collar—or whatever the vet recommends. It’s been a long time since I owned a dog.”

  “Well . . . I would not mind having a good dog around, as long as it gets along with the children.”

  “If it shows even the slightest sign of aggressiveness toward you or the children, I won’t keep him.”

  “Yes, I cannot have an aggressive animal around.” Her voice was doubtful, and there was a worried frown on her face. “I don’t know, Tom. He looks like he could be very vicious if provoked.”

  For a moment, Tom thought he would have to find another home for his dog, when Rocky stepped forward and gave Claire’s hand a quick lick. Then he sat down on his haunches, looked up at her and whined, as though asking to be given a chance.

  She took one good long look at the dog’s pleading eyes. “He does seem to be a good dog.”

  “I’d like to give him a chance.”

  Rocky whined once more, wagged his tail, and Claire melted. “Everyone needs a chance. Even dogs.”

  A few hours later, Tom parked his car in front of the apartment and introduced a new and improved Rocky to Amy.

  “Oooh, Claire told me you had a new doggie,” she called from her seat on the porch. “What’s its name?”

  “Rocky.” Tom walked the dog over to her. “He’s had a busy day. He’s met Jeremiah, paid the vet a visit, made friends with a dog groomer, been deflead, deticked, washed, groomed, and is the new owner of matching food and water bowls and this snazzy new red dog collar and leash.”

  “He’s so pretty.”

  Tom allowed Rocky to approach Amy.

  Amy backed her wheelchair away from the card table and patted her lap. “Here, Rocky! Here, boy!”

  Tom was glad he had bought a leash. He wasn’t entirely sure what the dog would do. Some dogs didn’t like children, but
Rocky merely walked over, then sat down close to the wheelchair. When Amy reached out to pet him, he closed his eyes and accepted her caress like a gentleman.

  “He’s been hurt,” Amy said.

  “Yes, he has.”

  “Kind of like me and you.”

  Her comment surprised him.

  “Yes, kinda like me and you.”

  “What kind of dog is he?”

  “The vet said Rocky was Grand Pyrenees with some shepherd mixed in.”

  Amy continued to stroke Rocky’s clean, white fur. “Do you think he’ll make a good watchdog?”

  “Maybe. The vet said Great Pyrenees were bred to be guard dogs, and that sometimes rescued strays are the most loyal dogs of all. He said that sometimes they seem to understand what you’ve done for them and love you even more.”

  “That’s true.” Amy grew pensive. “I’m kind of a rescued stray, and I love Claire to pieces. I know exactly how Rocky feels.”

  “Maybe you and he will be good friends.”

  “I know we will.” Her face lit up. “I made you a present!”

  “You did?”

  “It’s nice. You want to see?”

  “I’d love to see it.”

  She picked up the card she had been coloring and handed it to him. He was surprised at the level of skill and artistry that had gone into it. It was much more advanced than what he would have thought a thirteen-year-old could do—but then, what did he know? He wasn’t exactly an expert on children.

  “That’s an eagle on the front,” she said. “I copied it out of a bird book Claire gave me.”

  “Why an eagle?”

  “Because Grace said you were sometimes sad because you weren’t flying helicopters anymore and so I thought I’d try to cheer you up. I wrote a poem just for you. Read it out loud.”

  He opened it and read the short verse:

  To Tom, Our New Friend

  Don’t be sad.

  Even birds walk sometimes

  Instead of flying.

  Walking isn’t such a bad thing,

  If you think about it.

  Especially if all you can do is . . . sit.

  The last line felt like a punch in the gut. He glanced up at her, sitting in her wheelchair, still stroking Rocky’s fur, a look of calm acceptance in her eyes.