Daughter of Grace

by Michael Phillips

  As we were getting into the wagon to head back home, while Pa was tightening a strap on one of the horses’ necks, Mrs. Parrish and Rev. Rutledge came up to him.

  “Could we have a few words with you, Mr. Hollister?” said the minister.

  Pa turned to face them, gave a nod, and continued fiddling with the strap.

  “Mrs. Parrish and I have been thinking a great deal about your children and their future,” Rev. Rutledge began. Pa shot him a quick glance, and I think the minister figured Pa was going to light into him like he had that day of the Christmas dinner. But before anything else was said, Mrs. Parrish jumped in.

  “It isn’t what you may think, Mr. Hollister,” she said quickly. “Actually, Rev. Rutledge and I’ve been commenting on what an admirable job we think you are doing with your family. We think it’s a fine thing you’re doing, and both of us are proud of you. We consider you a real example to some of the other men of the community.”

  Pa didn’t exactly seem comfortable with the compliment, but it did settle down the irritation that seemed ready to rise up. He just nodded and said, “I’m obliged to you for thinking so.”

  “We really mean it, Mr. Hollister,” added the minister. “And with more men like you, and women too—you know, family folks—coming to the area, we’ve been thinking that we should be giving more attention to the future of our young people. The church is going to be up before you know it, with facilities for a school during the week, and we think it’s high time something was done in the way of preparing ourselves for the changing times that are coming. We’ll need books and desks and paper and supplies. It’ll take a fair sum of money to outfit a new school.”

  He paused, and Pa, thinking they were finally getting around to the point of what was on their minds—that is, asking him for money—started to reply.

  “Well, I’m as much in favor of educating my young’uns as the next man. You can count on me to give my share. As long as our mine’s producing, I don’t mind contributing what I can. Tad’s the one that found the gold, and if he’s gonna be schooled, then I figure—”

  Mrs. Parrish interrupted him with a laugh.

  “You misunderstand us, Mr. Hollister! We didn’t come asking for your money, although the time for that may come later.”

  Pa stared back at her with a confused expression.

  “We think you’re doing such a fine job with your children, and being one that the men of this community look up to, we wanted to ask if you’d be on the committee to help get the Miracle Springs school organized, and to help us locate a teacher.”

  “Me? A committee? Why, I don’t know nothing about such things, and I ain’t—”

  “You don’t have to know anything special, Mr. Hollister,” she went on. “You’re a man of character, and whether you like to admit it or not, you’re one of this community’s leaders. You have children who will be directly involved in the outcome of whatever decisions the committee makes, and we think you are a logical choice and would do a fine job.”

  Everything was silent for a moment.

  Sitting in the wagon, we were hanging on every word, as still as a robin listening for a worm under his feet. Rev. Rutledge and Mrs. Parrish had said what they had to say, and Pa just stood there, his right hand hanging over the horse’s neck, staring off in the distance as if he was still shocked by their request but was thinking it over real seriously at the same time. The silence only lasted a minute.

  Then all of a sudden he turned his head back toward them. He had a look on his face I can’t even start to describe. I’d never seen quite the same expression from him before, though as I thought about it later I realized it was that look on his face that showed me Pa was changing. It was such a different expression than what I’d seen that first day we got to Miracle Springs and he came walking out of the saloon.

  “I’m right honored that you’d ask me,” Pa said. “And I figure I owe it to the kids . . . so I’ll do it.”

  He turned toward the wagon, jumped up onto the seat, flicked the reins and gave a click with his tongue, and with nothing more than a “Good day to you both,” we were suddenly on our way back home. I turned around to wave to Mrs. Parrish. She had a smile on her face, but she wasn’t looking in my direction. She was smiling at Rev. Rutledge.

  After that a committee was formed, and besides Pa and Mrs. Parrish and the minister, there was Mrs. Shaw who lived nearby, and Mr. and Mrs. Dewater from over on the other side of the valley. They met a few times and started sending out notices advertising the need for a teacher in Miracle Springs. And Mrs. Parrish, from her business contacts in some of the nearby cities, got information about desks and blackboards and schoolbooks.

  The kids were all excited because there was even talk of the school starting up this year, as soon as the church was finished, and getting to go to school again and see other kids every day was just about all the younger three could think about. I was getting a mite old for school, though I still thought some about being a teacher when I grew up. And Zack didn’t say much.

  But being on the committee wasn’t the only change. The way Pa helped with the building of the church and school showed me, too, that he was determined to be different than he had been for so long, that he wanted to be the family man Ma had known him to be. I’m sure he remembered that argument he and Rev. Rutledge had had last Christmas when they’d got to talking about the building of a church. Pa’d gotten mad when the minister started saying Pa was a fine Christian man who he was sure would help support a new church. But in spite of their differences, all through the summer Pa did help, probably more than any other man besides the minister.

  The second conversation that showed how much Pa was changing happened about two weeks before the dedication of the new church and school building. Pa and Uncle Nick were just cleaning up from a day’s work at the mine, and I was fixing to put supper on the table for them. All the rest of the kids were still outside. It had been a beautiful fall day and none of them were anxious to stop their playing and come inside. Maybe the sounds of them laughing and yelling outside, and me keeping quiet toward the kitchen end of the cabin made Pa and Uncle Nick forget I was there. I’d never heard them talk quite like this before, though from their words I gathered it wasn’t their first time.

  “Ya wanna come into town with me tonight, Drum?” Uncle Nick said while he washed his hands in the big porcelain bowl.

  “Don’t think so, Nick.”

  “Why not? We’ll quit plenty early.”

  “No, it’s not the time. I just don’t want to go, that’s all.”

  “Why not?” insisted Uncle Nick. “You got other plans?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what’s so blamed important to keep you here? There’s a big game tonight. What’re you gonna do at home?”

  “I don’t know. Read, fix that loose hinge on the door.”

  “Read? Tarnation—”

  “Maybe read to the kids some.”

  “What in blazes has got into you, Drum?” exclaimed Uncle Nick.

  “How many times I gotta tell you, Nick?” said Pa, his voice finally starting to rise a little. “Things are different now.”

  “Aw, come on! You ain’t no fun no more! Why, back in the old days, you—”

  “This ain’t the old days, Nick!” interrupted Pa, and he almost shouted the words. I wished I could slip out of the room, but I couldn’t help wanting to hear the rest of it too. “I rode with you, and we did lots of things. I tried to do some good, and I reckon I did a heap of things that wasn’t so good. But the whole time I was ashamed of leaving Aggie, and so now maybe I got the chance to make a little of it up to her by being a better Pa to her kids than I was when I was trying to take care of you! I ain’t your riding partner no more, Nick! What do I gotta do to get that through your thick head? I may be your partner in running this mine. But other’n that I’m the husband of your sister, and these are my kids, and I aim to do the best for ’em I can, though Lord knows there ain’t muc
h a man like me can do all by himself.”

  He stopped and took a breath, and Uncle Nick, like he always did when Pa got after him, got quiet and looked down at the floor.

  “So I ain’t going to town with ya! You can throw away your hard-earned gold, but not me! I gotta think of these kids’ future. And if I wanna read to my own kids, then you can keep your thoughts on the matter to yourself!”

  Uncle Nick sort of slunk toward the door and went outside. About five minutes later I heard his horse coming out of the barn. Pa ran outside.

  “Where you goin’?” he called out.

  “I don’t know, maybe down to Barton’s.”

  “No you ain’t, Nick! You stay away from Dutch Flat! Them’s a bad bunch down there and I half suspect Jed o’ knowin’ more about us than I like. You keep away from ’em, you hear!”

  “You think ye’re my ma now too?” Uncle Nick shot back.

  “You just keep clear o’ those varmints, that’s all,” said Pa, and came back into the house. A minute or two later we heard Uncle Nick’s horse gallop away toward town, and none of us saw him again for five days. Supper that night was quieter than usual, and Tad asking Pa every three minutes where Uncle Nick was didn’t help Pa feel any better about yelling at him. Whenever Uncle Nick went and did something foolish like that I think Pa blamed himself.

  But however Pa felt, it made me warm inside to think of Pa’s words, and how much he cared about us as a family. And as I thought about it over the next two weeks I began to think that maybe all the change wasn’t in Pa after all. I recalled Ma’s words when she said he was a good husband and father, and that she couldn’t have asked for any better. What I got to thinking was that maybe I was just starting to see some of what Ma had seen all along. Maybe this was how Pa had always been deep inside, or at least had wanted to be.

  Whatever it was, it sure pleased me to think that he’d rather stay home and be with us than go into town for a night of poker with Uncle Nick. So when I heard those words, “You men with tender hearts,” I immediately thought of Pa. More and more I was seeing how good a description of him that was.

  The next words Mr. Peters read made me think of Pa too, but in a different way. “Forgive others, you who must bear sorrow and pain.” There was hurt in Pa’s life. He had allowed me to share a little of it with him, though now that I’m older I understand more than I was able to then. A lot of wrong had been done, and he’d suffered and had to bear pain and sorrow for long years. And there were a lot of people Pa knew he had to try to forgive before the hurts from the past would go away—the bad men of that gang, probably Uncle Nick, and old Grandpa Belle, who never thought of him as anything but a low influence on his daughter.

  Most of all, I reckon, Pa had to learn to forgive himself. That was the hardest thing, especially with Ma dead and Pa feeling like he had done her such wrong never to come back to us. That’s why he wanted to be a good pa, so maybe it all had a way of coming together for good. I’m not sure I understand all of what he was going through because fathers are harder to really know than mothers. But I did know that Pa was trying hard to get rid of his past, and I loved him for it.

  More than that, I just loved him for the man he was. He really was a man of tender heart! Whatever the men in town might have thought, and however much Mrs. Parrish might have preferred a religious man like Rev. Rutledge to an uneducated, hard-working man like Pa; however much Grandpa Belle may have thought he shouldn’t have married Ma, as we sat there that day in September hearing those words in the new Miracle Springs church building, I couldn’t think of anything I was more thankful for than my Pa sitting beside me. He’s the one I would thank God and say Alleluia for!

  Chapter 3

  The Dedication . . . Looking Forward

  My friends of Miracle Springs . . .” Rev. Rutledge was saying, and I glanced up in surprise to see that Mr. Peters had finished and was just settling back into his seat. “My friends, this is indeed a great day for all of us! This is far more than the dedication of a new building. Of course, I would not downplay the importance of what a new church can mean to a community, nor what having a school building right here in our town will mean to the future of our young people. But this is more than the dedication of a building to these noble and worthy ends, for we stand embarking on a new era. . . .”

  I know I was distracting Pa, and I hoped Rev. Rutledge didn’t see me, but I had brought paper and a pencil with me, and I was trying to write down some of what the minister said. I knew this was a big day for Miracle, and I wanted to be able to put as much in my journal about it as I could. Pa didn’t cotton to the idea of my writing so much, though by then he was starting to get used to it.

  Rev. Rutledge was still talking. “. . . it’s a time, my friends and neighbors, when many communities around this expanding nation, communities like our own, are growing, a time when families are putting down roots. The pioneering days of uncertainty and lawlessness are drawing to a close. The statehood of our great California symbolizes the westward reach from shore to shore of a destiny that surely can be seen as in the Almighty’s plan to tame this land and make it fruitful and prosperous among the nations of the world.

  “And part of that destiny is surely the establishment of churches throughout the land, and the education of our young people with schooling. Therefore, I count it a privilege and a blessing to stand here today, as one of God’s representatives, in this building erected with the toil and sweat and the hard-earned money of a good number of you men, and to take my share along with you in dedicating it to God’s purposes, and to the future generations of Miracle Springs. . . .”

  As he spoke, I thought about how much Rev. Rutledge also had changed in the months since he came. That first day he spoke to the townsfolk in the saloon, he seemed none too sure of himself. After yelling out his first sermon, even us kids could tell he was more than just a little nervous when the men started to rile him. And afterward he left the building like a dog with his tail between his legs.

  But he’d gradually improved since then, and tried to say things so folks could understand them better. He still sometimes talked with a lot of religious words, and Mrs. Parrish had a way of saying things I could grab onto better, but I was getting so I could follow him easier than before. As I watched him today, speaking out with confidence and all the folks listening to him, I realized that he’d become a part of the community too. Men like Pa might not have thought of him as a friend exactly, and everybody wasn’t in favor of a church building coming to town, but I guess they were used to the minister enough to tolerate his staying around. Most of the grumbling about “too much civilization” had nearly ended by the day of the picnic. Even the men who were set against it at first managed to have a happy time too.

  I glanced up and realized I’d been daydreaming again.

  “So I thank you personally for your support of this building project,” Rev. Rutledge was saying. “Men of stout heart and vigor have given a great deal to this school and church, and you can all be proud of them—men like Mr. Hollister there—” Pa squirmed a little as he said it—“And Mr. Shaw and Mr. Timmons, and so many others of you. And not just the men, but you women too, with food and drink and encouragement—and some of you even drove a few nails!

  “But in addition to the construction of this church, I owe you thanks for the support you have given me as your minister. When I came to Miracle Springs last November there were a good many of you unsure whether you wanted a parson in your midst! And I must admit to being disheartened at times along the way. But owing to the encouragement of the faithful among you, I think we have managed to become accustomed to one another, and can now begin to move forward, growing together spiritually.”

  I knew he meant Mrs. Parrish. She had been his only friend for the first several months, and even now was the only person in Miracle Springs who was with him very often. Some of the other folks would have him over to their place for a Sunday dinner, but you’d see Mrs. Parrish and him toget
her during the week, and it seemed like every time I went to visit her, he was either coming or going or staying for supper. Folks more-or-less figured that someday they’d get married. I guess I figured that too, because Mrs. Parrish had wanted him to come to Miracle so bad and had seemed more than just a little partial to him since then.

  And Rev. Rutledge was softer-spoken now on account of being around Mrs. Parrish so much. He didn’t preach about hell hardly ever anymore, and he seemed glad to have some of the rowdy men come to meetings on Sunday even if he knew they’d be drinking and fighting again later in the week. So it seemed Mrs. Parrish was taming Rev. Rutledge, and I suppose that’s part of what a woman’s supposed to do when she marries a man.

  I could see why he’d admire her, for Mrs. Parrish was a fine lady. She was always thinking of others and trying to do what she could to help them. I knew how much she’d done for me in just a year. Even as I scribbled down what I could of what the minister was saying, my mind went back to that day a few months earlier when she’d come back from Sacramento. She rode all the way out to the cabin to see us, and when she got me alone for a moment she handed me a little package, wrapped up in pretty blue paper.

  “Open it,” she’d said as I stared back at her, not exactly knowing what to think.

  I untied the ribbon, then slipped my finger through the edge of the paper and unfolded it. Inside was a gorgeous little book with green and orange flowers designed on a cloth cover, bound together by a tan leather spine.

  “What is it?” I asked. “It’s beautiful!”

  “Open the pages,” she said, smiling so big she could hardly contain it. I opened the book right in the middle and found nothing but blank pages staring back at me. I flipped all through it and there wasn’t a single word anywhere.

  I must have looked puzzled because she started laughing.

  “It’s for your journal, Corrie,” she said. “I had it specially bound for you in Sacramento.”