American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  As Cherity and Seth rode along one hot afternoon after the day’s work in the fields had been completed, they heard shouts coming from the direction of the river near the site of an abandoned mill.

  “What’s that?” said Cherity.

  “It sounds like someone’s in trouble,” said Seth. “Come on!”

  Within seconds both riders had accelerated to a full gallop toward the frantic sounds.

  Seth emerged onto the riverbank and reined in, prepared to rush straight into the slow-moving current in answer to what he took for drowning cries for help. But an altogether unexpected sight met his eyes as he sprinted to the water’s edge.

  “Seth!” cried a gleeful voice from the middle of the river. “Look what I’ve got!”

  A look of incredulity followed by a wide smile came over Seth’s face. There was his brother, bare-chested and barefooted, trousers soaking wet, wobbling to keep his balance in the middle of the river on a makeshift raft of timbers and logs loosely held together with a few strands of decaying rope.

  “Tom… what are you—,” he began. But a shriek of pure boyish pleasure interrupted him as Thomas lost his balance and careened sideways into the water with a mighty splash.

  “What’s going on?” said Cherity as she rode up.

  “Look—it’s Tom!” laughed Seth. “He’s got a dilapidated raft of some kind out there.”

  “Come in, Seth!” shouted Thomas as his head bobbed out of the water. Immediately he made for his craft with a great flurry of arms and legs. “I found an old raft!”

  Already Seth was off his mount’s back and his boots were on the ground. He tore his shirt off over his head, threw it up the bank, and dashed into the water with a great cry of delight.

  Two minutes later he and Thomas were perched, struggling to keep their balance, on the twisting, moving logs of the half-waterlogged contraption.

  “Look out, Tom,” yelled Seth. “The end of that log you’re on is sinking!”

  “Ow-eee!” shrieked Thomas and again flew into the water.

  The motion upset Seth’s precarious balance. The next instant he followed on the other side with a howl of ecstasy that ended abruptly with burbling suddenly submerged under the current.

  Both rose above the surface like two corks. “What are you waiting for, Cherity!” cried Thomas making for the ship.

  Cherity, who had not been seen in a dress since their arrival at Greenwood, did not have to be asked twice. She was already tugging at her boots. Seconds later, blouse and vest and dungarees soaked and threatening to weigh down her slight frame, she was making for the middle of the river with as much confidence in her stroke as she maintained on the back of a horse.

  She reached the raft just as the two brothers were climbing aboard after another series of falls.

  “Here… give me your hand!” said Seth.

  He pulled her up, and with three of them now wobbling to maintain their balance, the craft was even more unsteady. It took two or three more tries, each ending with squeals and cries and splashing failures, before they gained a temporary equilibrium—Thomas straddling one log, Seth kneeling on the opposite side on a wide plank, and Cherity lying somewhere in the middle, legs dangling in the water, laughing with delight.

  Slowly they recovered their breath.

  “Where’d you find it, Tom?” asked Seth.

  “Over there—in the mill.”

  “It’s too waterlogged to keep steady.”

  “I know, but if we got dry wood and logs—there’s a bunch of stuff over there. We could make it float high and level.”

  As Cherity lay wet in the hot sun, gazing straight up into the blue of the sky above and listening to the boys excitedly planning and scheming how to improve their raft-ship—for by now Seth had become a full partner in the vision—she thought she had never been so happy in her whole life. If only such moments might last forever.

  On Seth’s part, it was not until later that night—as he lay in bed reliving the day’s adventure on the river and all the designs he and Thomas had hatched for the raft—that its deeper significance with respect to his own feelings began to dawn on him. It was a startling revelation.

  He had never had so much fun with anyone in his life, male or female, as he had had during the past week with Cherity Waters!

  Who was this girl, anyway, who loved horses and could ride as fast as he, who could talk about any subject not just dresses and hair and balls and beaux, who was not intimidated by anything, who would jump on the back of any horse whether broken or not, who would rush into the river with her clothes on just as eagerly as any schoolboy, who could laugh and joke and reflect on serious things and be equally natural with all three?

  Was Veronica Beaumont even capable of the sheer pleasure of a swim in the river without some hidden girlish scheme in the back of her brain? And even if she claimed to be an atheist—the idea of it still brought a smile to his lips—at least Cherity gave thought to serious things. Had Veronica ever really thought deeply about anything?

  Actually, there was one thing she thought about, Seth realized. How deeply she thought about it he wasn’t sure. But she thought about it constantly.

  Veronica Beaumont thought about herself.

  But Cherity… she thought about life and nature and animals and the world and people and right and wrong. She had even thought about God too. Though temporarily she had arrived at some wrong conclusions, at least she was thinking. That was the important thing. Her mind was alive and eager to learn and know all it could. Veronica never expressed curiosity about anything.

  As gradually Seth drifted from consciousness, with visions of boats and rafts, high seas and raging rivers spinning fancies in his youthful brain, throughout it all hovered the image of Cherity’s face. By the time sleep overtook him, she had become the mistress of a mythical vessel of the clouds, an angel in white seated upon her ship’s throne, billows of silky sail flapping high above them in the airy breezes of an eternal heavenly twilight, he and Tom her devoted skippers whose duty it was to sail her ship into the night… and sail it well.

  Richmond Davidson was in his study when Carolyn walked in holding the large thick manila envelope. The look on her face told him he should probably open it sitting down. A glance at the return address told him why: The Law Office of Harland Davidson, Richmond, Virginia.

  He drew in a breath, uttered a silent prayer, then took his letter opener, slit the fold, and removed the contents.

  He looked them over, read a moment, then glanced up at Carolyn.

  “Well,” he said with a sigh, “it appears Harland and Stuart have changed their strategy to enveigle their way into Greenwood’s assets.”

  “You mean the lawsuit against your mother’s will?” said Carolyn. “Changed… how do you mean?”

  “They are suggesting an out-of-court settlement.”

  A look of annoyance came over Carolyn’s face. “I can tell that I am going to hate it already!” she shrugged.

  Richmond smiled. “I cannot say I like it either,” he said.

  “All right—what is Harland’s proposal?”

  “He and Stuart have agreed to drop all further discussion of contesting mother’s will in exchange for a monetary settlement.”

  “I should have suspected such a thing. For how much?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  Carolyn gasped in amazement.

  “That is for all four of them.” Richmond held up four sheets of paper. “These are four promissory notes, executed in favor of Pamela, Margaret, Stuart, and Harland… in the amount of five thousand dollars each, at 3 percent interest, payments of seventy-five dollars per month, including interest on unpaid principal balance, to begin to each of them next month, and to continue monthly until paid in full.”

  “That is three hundred dollars a month!” exclaimed Carolyn. “That is a staggering sum. We will never be able to meet such an obligation.”

  Now she needed to sit down! Carolyn sought the couch
opposite her husband’s desk and collapsed into it, her face white.

  “I almost expected it,” sighed her husband at length. “Having heard nothing in three years, I had hoped perhaps they were reconsidering the veracity of Stuart’s claim.”

  “Oh, but it is so wrong and unfair!” exploded Carolyn in a rare burst of antagonism. “I can’t help it, Richmond—sometimes I wish you would fight back.”

  He smiled sadly.

  “And sometimes I wish I were given leave to fight back,” he said. “But I am an owned man, Carolyn. You are an owned woman. We do not dictate our own course.”

  Before they could discuss it further, a knock sounded from the door. They glanced toward it. There stood James Waters, newspaper in hand.

  “Come in, James,” said Richmond. “What’s the news?”

  “It seems it is your friend making it,” replied Waters. “Apparently Senator Everett’s health is declining and the party big wigs are using Beaumont as a substitute hard-liner. He just gave a speech in the capital a few days ago that has people talking. He—”

  Now first he saw Carolyn, and suddenly realized from the look on Richmond’s face that his host and hostess had been engaged in something of a serious nature.

  “I apologize!” he said. “I did not know you were here, Carolyn.

  I did not mean to interrupt.”

  He turned to go.

  “No, please, James,” said Richmond, “join us. It is only a matter of something received in today’s mail that has temporarily knocked us out of the saddle.”

  “Bad news?” said Waters, taking a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs.

  “Let me just say that it is difficult news… though not entirely unexpected.”

  “Anything I might help with?”

  “Not unless you happen to have twenty thousand dollars,” snorted Carolyn, “which, I might add, contrary to the opinion of a certain attorney who shall remain nameless, we do not!”

  “What my wife is so delicately trying to say,” clarified Richmond, “is that we find ourselves behind a rather unpleasant and burdensome financial obligation owing to my late mother’s will. A cousin has contested it on behalf of himself and his sister, as well as another two cousins, also on my father’s side and likewise brother and sister. The four have agreed to settle and drop the suit… if I agree to a rather heavy settlement involving these—”

  He held up the four documents still in his hand.

  “—four promissory notes, one to each of them, for five thousand dollars each.”

  Waters whistled in astonishment. “No wonder Carolyn is upset,” he said. “That is an enormous amount. They must have a strong case in the matter of the will.”

  “In truth, they have almost no case whatever. I more than half suspect the contestation of the will was but a ruse to see how far we might be prepared to go in effecting a settlement.”

  “What makes them think they can take advantage of you in this way?”

  “Richmond always gives people what they want,” said Carolyn, beginning to cool.

  “Why not fight it?” asked Waters. “Ignore the notes. Let them pursue their case in court. If, as you say, their grounds for a claim are thin, they will not expend a great deal of expense on a court case before they will give up. If you need legal counsel, I know several attorneys in Boston who are highly respected in their fields and whom I am certain we—”

  “Thank you for your offer,” said Richmond. “But this is a battle I cannot fight in that way.”

  “I… don’t understand—has the matter already gone to court?”

  “No, nothing like that. I simply meant that I must fight the matter through in my heart, in prayer not in court.”

  “You will surely not agree to something like this if there are no compelling legal grounds binding you to the terms of those notes.”

  “I will have to see.”

  “But they could drain every dollar of income from this place for the rest of your lives. And what about your sons—it hardly seems fair to them to put the plantation in such financial jeopardy.”

  “God will see to our affairs, our finances, and our sons. I know there are times when you must not allow people to take advantage. If this proves to be such an occasion, I will fight. I am not afraid of a battle for right and truth, but I want to make sure the battles I fight are the Lord’s, not my own. But if God speaks to me to relinquish my own rights in the matter, to trust our affairs and finances to him, to trust Greenwood to him, for it is his land not ours, then I will sign and abide by the terms of these notes.”

  Waters shook his head in disbelief, as if he were hearing a foreign language. “I simply cannot understand,” he said. “What you are saying sounds absurd to my ear. You are a thinking, reasonable, intelligent man. I cannot grasp how you could possibly arrive at such a conclusion.”

  “I cannot explain it,” said Richmond. “Sometimes the walk of faith means appearing the fool, though I doubt that many of God’s people really look like fools when they attempt to walk in the integrity of Christlikeness.”

  “Are you actually saying that you attempt to model your life after the man Jesus Christ?”

  “I do not do so very well,” replied Richmond, “but yes, that is my attempt.”

  “And you, Carolyn,” said Waters, turning toward the couch. “You go along with him in this?”

  “Of course. It is my attempt too. Again, not as successfully as I might like, perhaps, but it is what our lives are all about.”

  Waters shook his head. “You two live in a different world than I’ve ever heard of, that’s all I can say. Even my late wife did not carry her religion that far. In all my years in church, though I have heard hundreds of sermons on every theological point imaginable, I do not ever recall hearing the suggestion that we should pattern our lives in complete fashion after a man who lived 1900 years ago in a completely foreign culture. The thing is entirely unpractical, not to say impossible.”

  Richmond smiled. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Completely unpractical.”

  He rose. “Well, I think I shall leave you two to carry on this discussion without me,” said Richmond. “I need to seek consultation with my master.” He left the room.

  “What did he mean by that?” asked Waters when he was gone.

  “It was his way of saying he needed to pray the matter through.”

  “It sounds like he has already decided?”

  “Hearing from God is not an exact science, as they say. It is very subtle and emotive. In our humanity there are always uncertainties. And it has been three years since he went through this, at the time the lawsuit first reared its head.”

  “But why in heaven’s name does he insist on moving ahead with such folly as to buckle to this pressure?”

  “It may look like folly to you, James. To me it is a lovely and manly obedience.”

  “I hardly understand what you mean,” rejoined Waters. “Obedience is never a word one hears associated with manliness. It sounds like servility.”

  “Not to one who recognizes the manhood of Jesus as the perfection of manhood,” said Carolyn. “There is nothing so lovely in a man as the relinquishment of self-rule. What you are watching in my husband at this moment is the essence of what makes him who he is—a man who seeks not his own. In all that arises in his life, he seeks to lay down his own will that he might hear, and then obey, what is God’s will. His is a hard life because of that commitment. It is the hardest thing a man can do. But then that also makes it the supreme act of which a man is capable. What you are witnessing explains why I love him, as much as I fight it within my own self upon occasion,” Carolyn added, remembering her own annoyance of only a few minutes earlier, “and why I have cast my lot with him—because he is God’s man.”

  “It sounds like you have seen this same mental process many times?”

  “Many times. Though I would prefer to call it a solitary sojourn into the garden than a mental process.”

  “
Your garden outside?”

  Carolyn smiled. “No,” she said, “a different garden. It is a battle, and not an easy one—the battle all God’s men must wage—the battle against the self of the human nature. The battles against his manhood, against ambitions that are as strong and human as any man’s, are difficult ones to wage. Richmond is a strong and determined man. These things are not easy for him. It truly is a battle. It is the most important battle, though an invisible one, in which humanity may engage.”

  “You say… may engage?”

  Carolyn nodded. “To join in that invisible battle against self is always a choice,” she replied, “not a matter of mere belief or point of view. It is not a matter of belief or creed. It is a matter of choosing to enjoin the garden battle, which is the laying down of self-will. I have seen Richmond in a near passion of frustration, even anger, at times, so desperate and strongly does his ‘old man,’ as Paul calls it in the New Testament, want to follow a certain course of action. But invariably a moment comes when he closes his eyes, draws in a breath, and becomes quiet. I know he has been to the garden, has once again followed the example of the higher manhood than the manhood of self, and has laid the thing down.”

  Carolyn paused, then looked seriously into the face of their guest. “Do you recall when I told you that Richmond’s quest from the day he walked into my father’s church was a quest to understand God?”

  Waters nodded.

  “What you are observing, right now, in the struggles he is going through, is the reason his quest has been successful and why he has come to a deeper understanding of God. Obedience to what God says to do is the door that opens the eyes of understanding.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what he says to do’?”

  “God’s ways always follow the same pattern. When we pray for understanding, he will then give us something to do. When we obey by doing it, understanding will follow. When we pray to be made strong, he will give us something to lay down. When we pray to be made capable of forgiveness, he will bring someone to hurt us or speak untruths about us. When we pray for joy, he will bring something hard through which we have to discover that joy is not found in pleasurable circumstances but in a region of the heart where the ups and downs of fortune cannot reach. It is the formula for spiritual growth. There is always something to be done that brings spirituality to life. Richmond realizes what is at stake in this decision and does not want to make a mistake.”