Whisper Town

by Patricia Hickman

  Angel tolerated the morning, answering the teacher when she called on her. But she kept thinking about Lucky and Myrtle and how they came together like stars had joined them. By lunch bell the feeling of getting back into her school work had returned since the numbing Thanksgiving break. Through the classroom window she could see Ida May sitting on a rock, eating her mustard biscuit and wild turkey.

  A boy tossed down a handful of marbles near her and two others joined him for a game. The girls that usually joined Ida May during the lunch hour played at the other end of the schoolyard. One of the boys said something to Ida May. She turned her back to him. The other two sat up, interested in whatever their buddy had started. Their skinny faces contorted and they took up where their friend had left off.

  Ida May’s head went down and her arms came up over her face.

  Angel threw up the window glass. “You boys, what are you saying to my sister?”

  The tallest boy, the marble proprietor, felt safe enough, a wall of window acting as a fortress between himself and Ida May’s grown sister. He said, “We told her that her skin was going to turn dirty if she didn’t stop hanging around those coloreds.”

  Angel picked up her books and left the classroom. She found Ida May on the playground alone and showing wet eyes. “Let’s go home,” she said. The boys had run off. Angel could throw a rock that far if she tried. “Let’s go.”

  Fern had gotten to the point of coming and going from the parsonage without knocking. She came through the front door, holding two sacks, the tops of two bread loaves hanging out. Her cheeks blushed from the cold. “Day-old bread from the Honeysacks and donuts and a canned ham. You want these in the kitchen?”

  Before Jeb could answer, Lucky said, “I’ll help you in with those things.”

  Ida May undressed a doll near the radio.

  “I heard you came home early today, Ida May,” said Fern. “Angel about?”

  “Will sent a canned ham? It’s not Christmas yet, is it?” asked Jeb.

  “I threw in the ham.”

  “Donuts sounds good,” said Lucky. She held Myrtle face out. The baby held up her head now.

  Jeb called Angel from her room. She had not come out in two hours. Jeb saw the satchel under Fern’s arm. “Schoolwork for truant children?”

  “I don’t blame the girls at all for leaving. These are a few assignments for Ida May. No need in allowing a few boys to interrupt her studies.”

  “You brought my arithmetic home?” asked Ida May.

  “She’s thrilled,” said Jeb. He heard the sound of feet against the front porch. He opened the door.

  A man dressed in a blue shirt and slacks asked, “Are you Mr. Jeb Nubey?” The man held out a telegram and an envelope. “Sign here and this stuff is all yours.”

  “Who is here?” Angel emerged.

  Jeb thanked the man and brought in the telegram and envelope. He read the telegram while Fern worried over the delivery of bad news. “I won the essay contest.” He pulled a check from the envelope. It was signed by the American Dream people in an amount large enough to buy a new set of truck tires.

  Fern had been gone several hours. She had papers to grade and complained she had not slept well in over a week. Jeb had walked her to her car, but so had Ida May and Lucky.

  Fern kissed his cheek and climbed into her car. Her smile did not come all the way across her face this time and that troubled Jeb. He felt like what he had asked of her had not been enough or too much and the pressure of those two poles tore at both of them. They had not been alone since Oz had found them at Fern’s house, nearer to the consummation of their feelings than they had ever been.

  He still did not know how Fern felt about that.

  He sat on the couch with the American Dream check lying flat in his lap. He stared at the floor while the girls ran back and forth from the bedroom to the kitchen, sharing a glass of milk, and finishing the donuts until nothing was left but a bag gashed open and left empty on the kitchen table. Willie yelled at them to be quiet and finally, when Lucky took the baby into Jeb’s room again for a peaceful rocking to sleep, the house grew silent.

  The check gave Jeb a sense that certain possibilities ought to be considered. He could use the money to take Fern to Oklahoma and start off clean. If he paved the way with a letter from Philemon Gracie, then another church, perhaps one near the city, would hire him as pastor. He would allow men like Oz Mills and Frank Pella to take over Nazareth and let the smallness of the smaller minds drag it to the dogs.

  A knock at the door startled him. He came to his feet, eager to quietly dismiss whoever had come at so late an hour before curiosity dragged four children into the quiet of his evening. He was surprised and opened the door. “Floyd and Evelene, do come in,” he said.

  Floyd folded his hat over so many times it would never return to its former shape. Neither he nor Evelene would take a seat.

  The milk and donuts had disappeared, so Jeb apologized for having no refreshment to offer them.

  “We’re sorry to come so late, Reverend,” said Floyd.

  Evelene said nothing but kept looking through the door glass. They had left their automobile idling.

  “Is this an official meeting?” Jeb asked, worn out from board member queries. He kept hoping Floyd would take a seat and stop shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Evelene and I have been talking,” said Floyd.

  “Mostly Floyd’s been talking. I’ve only been listening.” She kept looking out the window and not at her husband. When she talked and made that one statement, her inflection sounded pointed, although her voice never lost its gentility.

  “What w-with all we have going on w-with the store and trying to k-keep our lives running throughout this Depression . . . ,” he stammered, and that annoyed Evelene and she whispered about how she was sick of blaming things on the Depression.

  Jeb took a seat even if Floyd wouldn’t.

  “I guess I have decided to resign from the elder board; that is, I’ll give you some time to find a replacement.”

  “Reverend, I don’t know about any of this,” said Evelene.

  “While we’re at it, we’re thinking of visiting the Lutheran church, up between here and Camden,” said Floyd.

  “We’d never fit in,” said Evelene, but now she started sniffling and poking at her right eye as though she were trying to remove a speck.

  “You’re resigning, Floyd?” asked Jeb. “I understand. I also turn down your resignation.”

  “Oh, good.” Evelene let out a big, satisfying sigh.

  “It’s the pressure of all that’s going on, Reverend. You know all the board members got rocks throwed through the windows of our businesses. Next they’ll be after our homes.”

  “Who is ‘they,’ Floyd? Do we know?” asked Jeb.

  “I think it’s that banking bunch, or at least the boys from Hope. I can’t prove it, but even our own people don’t like the reputation of our church being integrated.”

  “One teenage girl and a baby don’t exactly constitute integration, Floyd.”

  “People get funny ideas.”

  “We help them get better ideas, Floyd.”

  “You can’t change the way folks has been brought up. I admit it. I don’t like what you’ve done neither. I know what you’re going to say, that what you’re doing is Christlike. But things has been growing this direction in my head a long time. How can I change after all this time and feel good about it?”

  “Sit down,” said Jeb. He asked Evelene to go and turn off their idling engine.

  Jeb excused himself. He went into the bedroom and took Myrtle from Lucky’s arms. The baby had rocked Lucky to sleep.

  Jeb walked Myrtle out to Floyd. Before Floyd could protest, he placed her in his arms. When Evelene came back inside, she laughed at her husband. “He won’t even hold a grandchild yet, Reverend.”

  Jeb moved Floyd’s hands in place and then back in place as he wobbled the baby around. “Look at her, Floyd. See, sh
e’s got a smile.” Jeb pointed out her lashes, which were long and thick. He had Floyd count her fingers and then showed him her stomach and its soft, round arc. He handed Floyd a bottle and showed him how to feed her.

  Myrtle turned toward Floyd and it made him flinch.

  “She’s reacting to your touch, human touch, Floyd. She hurts when she’s lonesome, cries when her stomach is empty.”

  Myrtle latched onto the bottle nipple. She sucked a few times, batted her eyes, and then fell asleep.

  Lucky slid out into the hallway. “Where’s the baby?” She saw Floyd holding Myrtle.

  “We’ll put her to bed if that’s okay with you, Lucky,” said Evelene.

  Lucky bid them a good-night.

  “Change comes in strange ways, Floyd,” said Jeb.

  Floyd stroked the top of her head. “God forgive me,” he whispered.

  16

  THE PARSONAGE HAD TOO MANY WINDOWS FOR winter. The wind seeped through and moisture gathered inside the glass, so much so that Willie made a game of breaking the ice off the parlor windows.

  “You clean it up, Willie, or it’ll melt on the floor!” said Angel.

  “It gets dark too early,” said Lucky. “I wish for longer days, don’t you, Reverend?”

  Jeb wrote in his sermon notebook and said, “Ten weeks of winter and then the days will come back to us.” The winter had settled in too soon, but he would not complain in front of the kids. Meat had not been in the stew pot for a week and he worried over the cords of wood and whether they were too few.

  Ida May’s hair had grown to her waist, thin and silky like a newborn colt’s. Lucky braided it down her back and tied it pretty at the end with red silk. When she was done with the crafting of Ida May’s hair, Lucky came to her feet, dragged a chair to the side window, and watched. If her brother had returned, Jeb had not seen him. She made no mention of him, but Jeb saw the way she craned her neck toward the woods, especially before sunset.

  Angel glanced into the parlor, saw Lucky, but then pursed her lips, like she might consider something different to say. She folded her arms in front of her and then asked Ida May and Willie to take a turn at peeling potatoes.

  Jeb scribbled another note in his notebook and sneezed into his handkerchief. He had not fully recovered since Thanksgiving, only good enough to maintain a steady course and hate the sight of daylight.

  The falling sun, the deepening borders of sky weighing down the horizon, all of it seemed to pull Lucky down with it. She sighed. Jeb put down his pen and said, “I’d like to know something about Jewel. What are the differences in your ages?”

  “Six years. Jewel is twenty and Ruben is eighteen. My mother said that she had them too close together, that Ruben took up her time and Jewel went wild,” she said. “Everyone in the family knows that Jewel would go her own way no matter what. Momma likes to have things to blame, is all.”

  “Jewel dropped off your things that day. Has she ever been to Nazareth before?”

  “Far as I know, it was her first time here. She don’t have no business in Nazareth. Her business is where her men are.”

  “Her business, as in her work?”

  “Her work is something else entirely.” Lucky turned around in the chair and faced Jeb. “You think I mean she sleeps with men for money. Her business is, you know, her life. She makes money keeping up laundry for rich ladies. Then she spends it all at bars.”

  “Did she know Frank Pella?”

  “Why you want to talk about him? He no good. He don’t have no business in Nazareth neither. He should stay back where he belong.”

  “How do you know him?”

  Lucky turned back toward the window. “The sun’s gone. You want me to fetch you a sweater, Reverend?” A slice of Willie’s ice had hardened fast to the glass. She tried to scrape it with her nail.

  “Frank is no good, you said.”

  “Not worth talking about.”

  “Enough about him, then.”

  Lucky got up and crossed the parlor to join the others in fixing supper.

  Jeb was relieved to finally hear out of both ears and to walk around without feeling as though his head would explode, especially during the Sunday sermon. He preached, went home, went to bed, and got up Monday, the first Monday since Thanksgiving that was clear of sleet pebbling the window.

  Lucky stayed home with Myrtle and he dropped off the Welbys at school. He drove downtown to pick up a newspaper and drink Beulah’s coffee, hotter than he could make it and, for his sore throat, a relief.

  “I seen you coming, Reverend, and I got your cup ready,” Beulah said. “God help those poor puffy eyes of yours.”

  Jeb took his cup and sat in a booth instead of at the bar. “Nothing to eat,” he told her.

  He read the front page of the Nazareth Gazette, a piece about how families celebrated Christmas in Europe next to an editorial about the rise of Germany’s enigmatic leader, Adolf Hitler. The United States’ sanctions imposed on foreign trade had been relegated to the back page.

  Jeb pulled out a letter from his brother Charlie, learned that he was once again an uncle, only this time by their younger sister in Temple, Texas. He remembered to smile occasionally at Beulah to keep his coffee warmed.

  The diner’s quiet resonance could not be overcome, it seemed, even by the enticement of a Monday blue plate special advertised out on the sidewalk. Jeb read the sign before returning to his paper.

  The clipped walk of the banker’s nephew made him sigh. Oz Mills ferried the mail down the walk and in to Val Rodwyn, who kept the mail flowing in the Honeysack’s General Store.

  “I hear you won an essay contest.” The voice came from behind Jeb, a man seated in the adjoining booth addressed him in a gentle manner.

  Jeb turned and offered a handshake, polite and fast so he could return to the coffee and the news. “I surprise myself sometimes.”

  “Reverend Alexander, from the Lutheran church. We’re on the other side of town from you.”

  Jeb fumbled through the paper, turning the pages.

  “I read it in the Sunday paper from Hot Springs last week,” he said. “Going to speak at the Lincoln Memorial, it said. Sounds ‘big time.’”

  “It’s a modest event, I believe, and won’t take place until the summer. Would you happen to have that newspaper on you?”

  “Wife used it to line the garbage can.” The Lutheran minister laughed. “You trying to fix the South, I hear.”

  “Not the whole South,” said Jeb. “Not even a fixing of any kind.” He invited the minister to join him at his booth, if only to keep the conversation private.

  Reverend Alexander got up and took a seat across from Jeb.

  “I’ve come by two more children that aren’t mine. I’d be more interested in finding them a home than fixing anything. There’s this girl that I’d like to marry and I have too many kids around.”

  The Lutheran laughed.

  “I’m not much good at fixing matters, it seems. Not that I wouldn’t wish I could.”

  “But you wrote an essay.”

  “I was mad, that’s all.”

  “Apparently it got someone’s attention.”

  Jeb wanted Alexander to lower his voice, but he didn’t know him well enough to ask. He lowered his own voice. “If anyone around here knows about the essay, well, it wouldn’t matter to them. I don’t bring it up.” He could not tell if the Lutheran comprehended what he was saying or not.

  “You’re stuck in the middle of something, not of your own making.”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “You’d rather be fishing.”

  “I would. I would.”

  “Is the girl pretty?”

  “No one prettier. I think sometimes that I could just blow off this town and take her out of here.”

  “She wouldn’t go?”

  “Fern has too much character.”

  The Lutheran kept laughing, and every now and then, he would say how much he liked Jeb and the way he loo
ked at things.

  “Let me buy you coffee sometime, Alexander,” said Jeb.

  “I will. Beulah, bring him your biscuits. The man’s stomach is talking.”

  Before Jeb could stop the biscuits, two lay on a hot plate in front of him. He didn’t know he was hungry until he ate the first one. He thanked the minister.

  The bell over the door tinkled. Oz Mills bellied up to the coffee bar. If he saw Jeb, he didn’t say anything.

  Jeb folded up the newspaper and gave his last biscuit to the Lutheran. “There’s a man I need to see and that’s him at the bar.”

  “You should pop the question, ask this Fern to marry you,” said Alexander. “Maybe she’d say yes now.”

  Oz’s head turned slightly, like his ear had picked up a radio wave.

  “I’ll see you around, Reverend,” said Jeb. He rose from the booth and took several steps to sit one stool away from Oz. Their eyes met in the mirror above Beulah’s workstation.

  “Morning, Nubey,” said Oz.

  To the best of Jeb’s recollection, Oz had never addressed him as Reverend. Jeb talked about the cold weather, his head cold, and, finally, the upcoming Christmas social at the church.

  Oz let out a sigh.

  Jeb moved to the next stool. “Oz, I know something’s gone on between the Blessed girls and that group of cronies you hang out with.”

  “I don’t know the Blesseds.”

  “Jewel Blessed. From Hope.”

  Oz laid his money on the counter and thanked Beulah for the coffee.

  “Something transpired the day that Frank Pella attacked Lucky Blessed.”

  “You have it backward and I don’t run in those circles. I knew of the Blesseds. What can I say? They’re not of my ilk.”

  “Has Frank Pella ever known Jewel Blessed, as in, has he ever had the chance to be alone with her? Has he ever obsessed over her?”

  “You’re headed downriver, Nubey. As usual, no paddle.” Oz slid off the stool and pulled on his overcoat. Before he pushed the door open, he said, “Your church is falling apart. Maybe you ought to tend to things that you can fix.”