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Prayers for Sale

Page 26

by Sandra Dallas


  The reverend did not turn his head to look at Nit but kept his eyes riveted on Hennie’s face. He swallowed twice before he said, “I need to buy a prayer of you, Ila Mae.”

  Nit started to say something, perhaps to note that the reverend had gotten Hennie mixed up with someone else. And then she stopped, and Hennie wondered if the girl remembered the story Hennie had told her the first time she’d called at the Spindle cabin. She’d explained that her name long ago was not Hennie but Ila Mae.

  Hennie herself could barely breathe as her old name hit her. She took a moment to calm herself before she replied, “I don’t sell prayers. It’s just a sign nailed to the fence. I give them away to those that need them—rightly need them, Abram.” Hennie stumbled over the name, for she had never expected to say it to him again, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “I thought a thousand times of stopping by your house and paying you whatever you would take for a prayer, but I didn’t, because I knew you wouldn’t sell me one.”

  “She doesn’t sell them to anybody,” Nit put in. The girl picked up a chair and set it beside the bed for Hennie, then seated herself on the far side of the room. Hennie eased herself onto the chair, her eyes still on the minister’s face.

  “Since I first saw that sign, I’ve woken up every morning wishing I could buy your prayers. But I knew nothing I offered would be enough. I believe I’d sell my soul for your forgiveness.” He paused, and when Hennie failed to reply, he added, “I’ve lived my life trying to do good, to make it up to you.”

  The man’s words brought such a hurting to Hennie that she began to shake, and tears fell silently. She felt as if there were a hole in her heart and that the winter wind was blowing through it. The minister did not speak again, waiting for Hennie to reply. “Is that why you came to Middle Swan?” she asked at last, not wiping the tears but letting them streak her face.

  “No. There’s a story to it, not one as good as the stories they say you tell and maybe not one you care enough to hear, but I’ll tell it anyway.” The voice was stronger than the man’s frail body, and Hennie knew that he had saved his strength in hopes she’d come. She didn’t say anything, and the minister continued.

  “Many long years I lived a life of dissipation, for I couldn’t face what I’d done. I said it was your fault for choosing Billy. And I blamed the men with me that day at your place, because it was in me not to want them to think me soft toward you. I had it in mind to come back to unloose your bonds, and I did, but I was too late. I never intended for your baby to get hurt.”

  “To die.” Hennie squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears, but they fell anyway.

  “Yes, to die.” The minister’s words were interrupted by a fit of coughing. When he finished with it, he breathed deeply, let the air out of his lungs, and continued, “One morning, I woke up with the stench of drinking and whoring on me, and I believe the Lord took pity on me. He told me He loved even the vilest sinner and that my life would be restored to me if I gave myself over to good works. So that day, I forsook my evil ways. I changed my name, for Abram Fletcher was a name of wickedness. I studied on the Bible and became a preacher.”

  Abram stopped and swallowed down another cough. “I knew you’d gone to Colorado, so I came here, too, although I didn’t expect we’d ever meet. I worked with sinners in the gold camps, and finally, I came to Middle Swan, where I stayed.”

  “And you found me,” Hennie said, twisting her hands in her lap. Her quilt square might have calmed them, but this was not a time for stitching.

  “Not at first. So many years had passed, and you didn’t call yourself Ila Mae anymore. You wouldn’t go to church after I arrived, and whenever we passed on the street, you turned away. It was when I heard your voice.”

  “I knew you the minute I walked into church the first day you preached. Caroline Pinto was playing “God Moves in Mysterious Ways” on the pump organ—I remember that—and then you lifted your head. You were older, and your hair was white, but your face was the same. I couldn’t ever forget your face. It was etched with acid in my heart. After that, I couldn’t step foot inside the church again. But then, maybe I was expecting you. I always knew we’d meet,” Hennie said.

  “You gave no sign you’d recognized me, but after a while, I came to think you had.”

  “Why did you stay?”

  The old man thought that over. “To see you every day and be reminded of my sin. It was my purgatory.”

  And mine, Hennie thought, for the blue devils seemed to visit her the most after she’d seen the minister.

  Nit rose from her chair, closed the door, and added a log to the fire, for the shack was old and poorly built, and the cold came in through the cracks in the boards as well as the doorway. Abram looked over at her, and Nit said, “I brought you horseradish for a poultice, but I think you don’t need it.” Then she added, “I don’t pass along other folks’ business.”

  “She knows the story. I told it to her,” Hennie said. “But I never told her you were Abram.”

  “It’s not my story to keep,” Abram replied.

  When the log caught, Nit added another, and the flames in the old stone fireplace leaped up, spreading warmth through the small room. “You want you some water?” Nit asked, and without waiting for the man to answer, she took him a dipperful of water from the bucket on the table. The sick man drank it down, and the girl returned to her chair, her hands between her knees.

  The minister was silent for a few minutes, and his eyelids fluttered and closed. The old man’s skin was as thin and mottled as old paper. Hennie sat quietly while Abram gathered his strength, and in a moment, he opened his eyes and said quickly, as if he might die before the words were out. “I ask your forgiveness, Ila Mae. My soul won’t rest easy without it.” He seemed to hold his breath while he waited for Hennie’s reply.

  The old woman took a long time answering. She looked down at her shaking hands, and with an effort, she stilled them. Then she sighed deeply and said in a trembling voice, for his words had burned her as surely as if they’d been writ with fire, “You have it.” And he did, she realized. After all those years, she was able to forgive. At that moment, she felt the tiny wild licorice prickers on her heart crumble and fall away as if the burrs were only feathers.

  The minister tried to raise himself up in the bed, but he couldn’t. So Hennie leaned over him. “I don’t deny I wanted to kill you, would have done it with these hands if I’d had the chance.” She lifted her hands and looked at them. “I thought the fires of hell were too good for you. But after a time, I stopped hating you. One day when I was asking the Lord why He’d let Sarah die, the Lord said back to me that I was asking the wrong question. He told me to wonder why Sarah had lived, and I knew it wasn’t so that I could carry around enough hate to fill an ore cart. So I let the hate go, but until now, I never forgave, and that hard-heartedness ate away at me all these years, just like an assayer’s acid. I saw the good you did, but I still held that long-ago time against you. In all these years, I never knew that forgiveness would heal my soul as well as yours.”

  Abram started to reply, but Hennie held up her hand. “I should have forgiven you a long time ago, Abram, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring you that ease. All those times I was praying for everybody else, I ought to have sent up a prayer for you. I believe if I had, it would have eased me.” She thought that over and added, “I can’t rightly ask the Lord to answer prayers when I have bitterness in my heart.”

  Abram smiled and held out his hand, and Hennie leaned close, and in a minute, she grasped the hand. “You can call it ‘deep enough’ knowing I forgive you, Abram.”

  A look of calm came over the man’s face, and he was silent. Then he remembered something and whispered, “Your earbobs. I kept them all this time. They’re in the dresser drawer.”

  Hennie smiled back, and the two old people looked at each other for a long time, no longer talking. There was no reason for further words. They’d said what th
ey had to, and they needed no more spoken between them. In a little while, Nit went to the bucket and filled the dipper, carrying it to the bed, and Abram drank again. The girl stood beside Hennie then, watching as the old man closed his eyes and slept. She moved her chair next to Hennie’s, and the two women stayed at the bedside for a long time, not stirring when schoolchildren rushed by, running a stick across the old boards of the cabin. Somewhere, a woman called, “Come and get your dinner or I’ll throw it out,” and Nit smiled, but Hennie didn’t seem to hear. After a time, Bonnie came into the shack, then Carla with the beef tea, and Nit stood up.

  “Is he . . . all right?” Carla asked

  “He’s sleeping,” Hennie replied, rising from the chair. “I can’t say how he is, but it won’t be long. He’ll be gone before morning.”

  “We’re planning for the worst. The coffin’s made,” Bonnie said. She added kindly, “It looks like you’ve blubbered up, Hennie, but I won’t pry into it. Whatever’s between you and the reverend isn’t my business.”

  Hennie didn’t reply, and in a minute, the two sisters sat down in the chairs beside the bed.

  “I’ll bring something to line the coffin with. I’ll bring it in the morning,” Hennie told them. The old woman stared down at the minister for a long time, then put her hand on his forehead. “Tap ’er light, Abram.”

  As Hennie and Nit started for the door, Bonnie said softly to her sister, “I guess Hennie doesn’t know it, but the reverend’s given name is Paul, not Abram.”

  After she and Nit returned home, Hennie removed the second of the burro quilts from the frame in the big room and put it aside. Then she went to her trunk and took out the half-finished Murder quilt, the one Abram had slashed so many years before. It was age-spotted now and one of the corners was mouse-nibbled, but the colors were bright, and for a moment, Hennie remembered that she had dyed the fabric herself; the crimson came from poppy petals, the green from hickory bark, the yellow from black-eyed susans. She mended the slash that Abram had made in the quilt, then put it into the frame, thinking that seventy years before, the quilt had been set in that very same frame, outside, in front of the house Billy had built. Then she began to quilt. If she worked all night, she would finish it by morning.

  Hennie quilted for hours, stopping only to nibble at the supper Nit fixed. She continued her stitching after the babies went to sleep and Dick and Nit closed the bedroom door. It was past midnight when Nit crept down the stairs. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought you might want other hands. With two of us at the frame, we can finish this quilt afore you can scat a cat. But if you feel the need to quilt it by yourself, I understand,” she told the old woman.

  Hennie pushed back her chair, rising slowly, for she had sat so long at the frame that her muscles were knotted. She had indeed thought to finish the quilt by herself, but now, she was grateful for the young girl to share the duty. “I’d be obliged. Just you sit,” she said, not altogether surprised that Nit was sensible of what Hennie was doing. Sometimes the young girl and the old woman seemed like slices from the same loaf of bread.

  “You want tea?”

  “Coffee,” Hennie said. She stretched to soften the hurting that was in her back. After Nit brought their coffee, her own doctored and Hennie’s plain, the two women sat down across the quilt from each other.

  Before she threaded her needle, Nit removed two earbobs from her basket and held them out to Hennie. “I took these out of the reverend’s drawer for you before Bonnie and Carla came back.”

  Hennie stared at the earrings, two thin gold hoops, and smiled. “Billy gave them to me for a wedding present. You keep them,” she said.

  The girl was startled and said they were Hennie’s, but the old woman waved her hand. “What will I do with them? I can’t wear them now. My ears closed up a long time ago. Besides, all that’s gone and past. I’m thinking about tomorrow.”

  Nit returned the earrings to the basket. She started to thank Hennie but stopped herself and instead, she said, “I’ve got to be real careful with the stitches, for we’re sewing for eternity.”

  Hennie laughed for the first time since she’d left her house to go to Abram. It was nice, she thought, that quilting with a friend, even in the darkest times, made her feel better.

  Nit poured them more coffee, and later, she went to the stove to make a second pot. Hennie paused once to run a hand over the smooth rails of the frame, stopping with her little finger over one of the holes that had been made with a hot poker. Suddenly she said, “I believe I’ll leave this frame for you to use. It wouldn’t be right, a person walking into this room and not seeing the quilt frame set up.” Nit protested, but Hennie, holding her needle, waved her hand. “I’ll be too busy to quilt.”

  Nit swallowed hard, sensible to what the frame had meant to Hennie all those years, and said, “I’ll treat it like a precious thing.” Then the girl giggled. “Are you leaving the PRAYERS FOR SALE sign, too?”

  Hennie thought about that and nodded. “I expect your prayers are as good as mine. We both of us are blessed enough to have prayers left over.”

  They took the Murder quilt from the frame as the dark was leaving the sky, and tacked the binding in place. Nit took her final stitch, then returned the needle and thimble to her sewing basket.

  Hennie, too, was done with her sewing. She ran her hand over the quilt and decided that only the sharpest eye would see that it had ever been slashed. She and the girl folded the quilt, and Nit set it on a chair by the window. Then she turned to Hennie, pondering something. “The time when I first came to Middle Swan, after you told me that story about Abram Fletcher, you said it didn’t have an ending. Now it does.”

  Hennie fixed her needle to a bit of flannel that was tied to the frame before she nodded at Nit. “It does,” she repeated, “and I believe it’s a good one.”

  “And now, you’ve started on another story.”

  Hennie looked past Nit to the sky, where the gray of dawn was giving way to red streaks that were rounded like the ridges on a washboard. A storm that was brewing over the Tenmile made her twitchy. She hoped it wouldn’t be a heavy snow that delayed her departure from Middle Swan. “Yes, I have.” The old woman smiled and cocked her head. “I’m hopefuller than can be that it’ll be a while yet before I know how that story comes out.”

  READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF

  THE BRIDE’S HOUSE

  Available April 26, 2011 from St. Martin’s Press

  Chapter 1

  SOMETHING CAUSED MEN TO STARE at Nealie Bent, although just what it was that made them do so wasn’t clear. Her body was more angles than curves, and her face, too, had all those sharp planes, far too many to be pretty. She was too tall to suit, and with her long legs, she took strides that were more like a man’s than the mincing steps of a young girl. The dress she wore, one of only two she owned, was faded yellow calico, threadbare at the wrists and neck and of the wrong color to complement her pale skin. Her second dress was no better.

  Still, men turned to look at Nealie Bent, for there was no question that the tall, thin girl was striking, or at least peculiarlooking, with her eyes the color of the palest blue columbines late in the spring, her hair such a pale red that it was almost the hue of pink quartz, and her face as freckled as a turkey egg. It could have been her youth that drew their attention. After all, Georgetown itself was still young, and youth was highly prized. Most of the young women there were already old, worn out from the work a mining town demanded of them, and from childbearing. The Alvarado Cemetery was full of babies, with here and there a mother buried beside her newborn in that forlorn spot. Like all the mountain towns, Georgetown was a hard place, and folks there had a saying: Any cat with a tail is a stranger.

  The same might be said in a slightly different way for a young woman, because any female with youth, such as Nealie, was new in Georgetown. But she would age quick enough. Still, for now—and for a few years hence, perhaps—the girl’s youthfulness matched the spirit of the town, a pla
ce that was mightily attractive to those seeking to make their fortunes.

  If it wasn’t Nealie’s youth that drew glances, then it might have been her air of innocence, and innocence was in even shorter supply in Georgetown than youth. But in that, the girl’s appearance was a sham, for Nealie’s short life had been a hard one. Though she knew more about the dark side of life than most her age, there was not even the hint of those hardships on Nealie Bent, and she appeared as fresh and guileless as a newborn.

  So no one could put a finger on exactly what it was that made men take another look at Nealie, not that anyone in that town bothered to analyze. But no one doubted that they turned to stare at her as she passed them on the broad board sidewalk or paused in her rounds of shopping to peer into store windows at the delectable items she could only dream about buying.

  Will Spaulding was no different from the rest of the men in his admiration. He’d seen the girl as she filled her basket from the bins of apples and onions and potatoes. And now, as Nealie stood at the counter of the Kaiser Mercantile store, talking quietly with Mr. Kaiser, Will measured her with his eyes. She was five feet eight inches, only two inches shorter than he was. Will’s eyes wandered over Nealie, taking in her slender build under the shabby dress, until he became aware that Mr. Kaiser was watching him and clearing his throat.

  “I said, ‘What can I do for you, young man?’” the storekeeper repeated. The girl had placed her purchases in her basket and was turning to go, not sending so much as a glance at the man standing next to her.

  Will cleared his throat, but he didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he stared at the girl as she left the store and walked past the large-glass window, leaving behind her soapy scent and the tinkling of the bell that announced customers. “Who is she?” he asked, as if he had the right to know.

 

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