Beneath a Southern Sky

by Deborah Raney

  As the conversation turned to high-school memories, Nancy reminded them, “Remember when you mixed up that little potion in sophomore chemistry, Daria?”

  “Me? Well, okay,” she laughingly conceded. “I might have done the actual ‘cooking,’ but you were the one who was supposed to be reading the ‘recipe,’ Nan!”

  “Oh, man, I remember that!” Diane interjected, her blue eyes flashing. “There were those green fumes boiling out of the beaker and Zindler was waving his arms like a madman, trying to evacuate the room.”

  “That stunt just about got us expelled,” Daria said, still smiling.

  “Poor Mr. Zindler,” Melinda chimed in. “I’m surprised he didn’t retire that year.”

  “What do you mean?” Cathy chided. “He did retire that year.”

  “No!”

  “That’s right,” Diane confirmed. “Remember, when we were juniors Dr. Unruh was the chemistry teacher.”

  “Oh, my goodness! You’re right. I hadn’t even thought about that,” Daria said.

  They dissolved into girlish giggles, all talking at once. She looked up with a wide smile on her face to see Nate’s parents and his sister, Betsy, and her family coming up the walk to the church. She sobered immediately. What must they think of her that she would smile at her husband’s funeral, let alone cut up with her friends, as they’d no doubt just seen her doing? She felt weighed down with guilt. And yet she was ashamed to realize that she resented the Camfields’ interruption, for she lusted for more of the laughter, more sharing of happy memories.

  Breaking away from her friends, she went to Nate’s family. “Hello, Jack, Vera.”

  In spite of her flawless makeup and her impeccable designer suit, Vera Camfield had aged ten years seemingly overnight. She responded stiffly when Daria embraced her. Daria quickly turned to Nate’s father. His hug was warmer, but he, too, seemed almost ill with grief. When Jack and Vera Camfield had come to the Haydons’ house the day Daria arrived home, they had seemed so strong, speaking of Nate as though he were still alive, even managing to smile at memories of their son.

  But the news had come yesterday that a search party had found the rubble of the burned hut on the river. It was a gruesome discovery: There were over two dozen bodies, many of them children, and those who hadn’t been burned beyond recognition had been left to decay. Apparently the villagers refused to come near the place where the ill had died. The search team had buried the dead in a mass grave under the suspicious watch of a small party of Chicoro.

  Though dreadful, the news had not surprised Daria, and in many ways it had put closure on Nate’s death for her. But she reminded herself that Nate’s parents had not had as much time to grieve as she had. The news of the search party’s findings must have been devastating to them. Not only had the Camfields lost their only son, but they would not even have the comfort of a grave nearby to visit.

  Daria turned to Nate’s sister, Betsy, and her husband, Jim Franklin. Nate and his sister had always been close, and the heartsick expression etched on Betsy’s face now broke Daria’s heart all over again.

  “Hi, honey,” Betsy said, reaching for her. Daria returned her embrace, and they both broke down. Putting his arms awkwardly around them both, Jim muttered his condolences. On the sidewalk behind them, the Franklins’ two preteenagers hung back, clearly uncomfortable to be there.

  “Hi, Wendy. Hey, Zach.” Daria forced a smile, wanting to put the children at ease.

  Zachary gave her a self-conscious wave, and Wendy dipped her head and stared at her shoes.

  “Thanks for coming, you guys,” Daria told them.

  Strains of organ music began to waft from the church, and through the open doors they could see people beginning to make their way toward the sanctuary. Daria directed Nate’s family into the church where her mother and father were standing to receive mourners. They exchanged hushed greetings, and then they entered the dim sanctuary in silence.

  Nate’s family sat in the row in front of Daria and her parents, and Daria, overcome with emotion, watched them. As the memorial service finalized his son’s life, Jack Camfield wept like a child, and his wife’s face seemed to hold a shadow of bitterness. Daria knew it was irrational, yet she felt responsible for their grief, as though she should have prevented Nate’s death. Witnessing their sorrow, waves of anguish and guilt rolled over her anew, and she wept until she finally felt drained of all emotion.

  When the service ended and the mourners began filing from the church, Daria saw Betsy slip out the back door with her distraught mother leaning heavily against her. Daria started to go after them, but just then Nate’s father came over to where she was standing with her parents.

  Jack Camfield took Erroll Haydon’s hand. “It was a beautiful service, Erroll,” he said, a quaver in his deep voice that Daria had never heard before. “Thank you for all you did to arrange it.” He cleared his throat and dipped his head slightly. “Well, I think we’re going to head back home now.”

  Daria’s father wrinkled his forehead and drew his thick brows together. “The women’s circle fixed a dinner for the family, Jack. They’ve planned for all your family. Won’t you stay and eat with us?”

  The older man shook his head, then motioned in the direction of the parking lot. “Vera’s pretty broken up. I think it’s best if we go on home now. We have a long trip back to the city.”

  Daria stood by silently during this exchange, but at Jack’s words she took a step toward the door that led to the back parking lot. “I’ll go say goodbye—”

  “No!” The word came out too forcefully, and several people turned to look their way. Softening his voice, Jack Camfield took Daria’s hand. “No, dear, it’s…best to leave her alone when she gets like this, but thank you. I’ll tell her you were concerned for her.”

  Daria nodded numbly and thanked him for coming, then felt foolish for thanking a man for attending his own son’s memorial service. As if he’d had a choice.

  After an uncomfortable moment, Jack Camfield broke away. Muttering a stilted farewell, he disappeared through the door.

  Daria’s parents exchanged troubled glances, but her father took her gently by the arm and led her to the fellowship hall where the family was being seated.

  When the dinner was over, her parents stayed behind to help clean up while Daria caught a ride back to the farm with her brother. Jason and his wife, Brenda, farmed with Erroll Haydon and lived just a few miles down the road.

  “Do you want us to come in with you, Dar?” Jason asked as the car idled in the driveway in front of the Haydons’ farmhouse.

  “No, thanks anyway, Jas, but I-I’d kind of like to be alone for a while.”

  He nodded and swallowed hard, his eyes brimming with tears. Daria had rarely seen her older brother cry, and it touched her deeply.

  Brenda leaned over the backseat and touched Daria’s shoulder. “You call if you need anything, Daria. I mean that.”

  “I know you do, Brenda. Thanks. Thanks for everything, you guys. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She climbed out of the car, waved them off, and hurried toward the house.

  She went upstairs, changed into the one pair of jeans she owned, and pulled on a ratty T-shirt that had been Nate’s. As she passed the mirror on the antique dresser in her room, the college insignia on the front of the shirt caught her eye. Unbidden, the memories came crashing back.

  She flopped down on the quilt that covered the high, canopied bed, and a film began to play in her mind. There was a young Nate, smiling and carefree, standing in the hall outside the door to her dorm room at KU, ready to take her to a ball game. He walked toward her on a campus sidewalk, that trademark grin melting her heart. She could almost feel his arms around her, smell the briny, outdoorsy scent of his hair—pale, straight hair that was as fine and silky as a baby’s. She had always teased him about that, secretly wishing she could trade him her own coarse, wavy hair.

  Her throat filled with longing, and she gave in to the tears
, railing at her loss, letting the sobs rack her body until there was nothing left to cry, crying out Nate’s name over and over, though she understood fully that he would never answer her again.

  She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes the sun was low in the sky and she heard her parents moving around in the kitchen downstairs. She climbed off the bed and went to the bathroom where she stepped into the shower and let the almost-scalding water run over her face, the sting of the hot water comforting.

  She turned off the spray and dried herself methodically. In the full-length mirror, under the bright fluorescent light of the bathroom, she noticed for the first time how thin she had become. In spite of the slightly rounded stomach the growing baby had begun to give her, her ribs were starkly outlined under her flesh. She told herself she must keep herself healthy. This baby was all she had left of Nathan.

  She pulled on the same jeans and T-shirt, swept her hair up into a careless ponytail, and went downstairs. The house was quiet again, and she found a note from her parents saying they had gone to her brother’s for a few minutes. She scribbled a message for them on the bottom of their note and headed for the pasture behind the barn. The man-made terraces unfurled in waves across the prairie in front of her. This had been her favorite thinking place as a teenager, and she was drawn once again to the peace the spot offered.

  The cattle in the neighbor’s field started a plaintive bawling when they saw her, no doubt thinking it was time for their evening feed. She smiled at this everyday sound from her childhood and felt suddenly comforted, glad that something so far from Colombia finally felt familiar to her again, had the power to console her.

  The Kansas sun was just beginning its slow descent, and the colors were spectacular. Watching the vibrant shades of purple and orange and pink against the deepening blue-grey sky, Daria felt a tentative hope swell within her, and a sense of home filled her anew. As she trudged through the prairie grasses, following the natural path of the pasture’s rolling terrain, she prayed.

  “Lord, I don’t know what you want me to do now, but I know…you love me. I know you’ve been with me”—she tried to swallow the huge lump that rose in her throat—“oh, God, what will I ever do without him? I don’t understand why you took him. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you sent us to Colombia only to have it end this way. I know I shouldn’t have to understand, God, but I want to.”

  In everything give thanks.

  She heard the phrase exactly as Nate would have spoken it—when the mosquitoes threatened to eat them alive, when half his medical supplies were lost when the boat overturned, when the rainy season imprisoned them in the hut for days on end. There’s something to be thankful for in every situation, Nate had always told her, even when she knew he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. She took in a sharp breath. How many times had she and Nate admonished each other with those very words?

  “Oh, thank you, God. Thank you for the years we had together.” She stopped at the top of a rise and looked around her. “And thank you that I have this place to come home to, Father. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do next, God, because I truly don’t know.”

  Immediately she was filled with thoughts of the child growing within her, and she knew it was her first answer. This child whom God had created of their love—hers and Nate’s—would be her most precious and immediate assignment for the next few months.

  She had not yet told anyone about the baby. She knew that she should see a doctor, make certain everything was coming along as it should. But something made her want to hang on to her secret. Her pregnancy was a blessing—a sweet remembrance of Nate and a tangible way for him to live on.

  “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, laying one hand lightly over her abdomen. She stood on the hill, cradling Nate’s unborn child that way until the sun disappeared behind a distant hedgerow. Almost instinctively she turned to the south and looked up at the evening’s first stars. She remembered the night she and Nate had stood under a starry Timoné sky and said their goodbyes. They’d had no inkling that night that they were saying goodbye forever. The thought tore her heart in two. What might she have said to him had she known it would be their last night together?

  She didn’t know the constellations as Nathan had. She wasn’t sure whether the star he had pointed out that night was visible in the Northern Hemisphere. What had he called it? Spica. She picked out a bright star that seemed to blink at her from the southernmost sky. For a moment, she pretended it was their star, and her heart was wrenched between two continents. She was happy to be home, yet engulfed by an intense longing to be back in Colombia. She was homesick to be in their little hut, caressed by the gentle tropical breezes, lulled by the myriad songs of the rain forest.

  But even if she could go back, Nathan would not be there.

  She wished he had known of her pregnancy before he’d gone off that day. What a comfort it would have been to have the memory of Nate’s joy at learning the news. She knew he would have been ecstatic. It struck her that where he was now, he probably did know about his child, and the knowledge gave her peace.

  Tearfully she spoke aloud, “Oh, Nate! I don’t understand any of this. I miss you so much, babe. Oh, how I miss you. But I know you’re happy. I know you’re in God’s hands now. And I…I’ll take good care of our baby. I promise. He’ll know how much you would have loved him.”

  The tears of grief that flowed were mingled with honest gratitude that God would give her this one last part of Nate. She turned toward the farmhouse and knew by the lights flickering in the windows that her parents were home again. They would be worried about her.

  With the warm evening breeze in her hair, the heat of a Kansas August still lingering, she started back toward the house, toward a new life that was strange and unknown. A life that God had not abandoned.

  Five

  Daria blew a wayward strand of hair from her forehead, putting a hand to her aching back as she surveyed the kitchen. Chocolate jimmies, silver shot, and dollops of pink frosting sprinkled the countertops, and an array of fudge and heart-shaped cookies fit to dress the showcases of the finest bakery lined the oak table in the middle of the room.

  With the corner of a checkered dishtowel, Margo Haydon reached up to wipe a smudge of flour from her daughter’s face before slumping wearily into a nearby chair.

  “You’d better get off your feet for a while, honey,” she scolded. “I can finish up here. We don’t have to take these to the church until five o’clock.”

  “I’m okay, Mom. I’ll go lie down in a little bit, but I can at least wash up these dishes first.”

  Her mother started to protest, then waved a hand in resignation. “Do what you want. You will anyway. But don’t blame me if your ankles swell up like balloons.”

  Daria was annoyed by her mother’s remark, but she tried to ignore it, realizing that just about everything annoyed her these days. She filled one side of the sink with hot soapy water, and leaned her swollen belly against the counter’s edge. The baby kicked hard in protest. Almost overnight she had gone from barely showing to looking every day of her eight months. The baby was resting low in her womb and her back was killing her, but she took comfort in knowing that she had only a few weeks to go.

  Daria had begun searching for a job her second week back in the States. She did not want to be a burden to her parents, nor did she wish to raise her child under their overly watchful eyes. But when her parents discovered her intentions to move out on her own, they begged her to at least wait until after the baby arrived. “Nobody would hire you in your condition anyway,” Margo pointed out.

  Daria had allowed herself to be persuaded, and now she was grateful for the reprieve. Staying with her parents had allowed her time to grieve her great loss, to plan for a future that didn’t include Nate, and to enjoy her pregnancy.

  As the baby’s birth drew near, it was sinking in that, despite her mother’s offer to baby-sit while she worked, her life was not going to be ea
sy. There had been a small insurance check through Gospel Outreach, and Social Security provided a meager monthly check, but it was going to take a full-time job to make ends meet.

  She rinsed the last mixing bowl and set it on the counter to dry. She stood on tiptoe, stretched, and kneaded her back with her fingertips.

  “Daria, please go lie down.” It was obvious that her mother had been studying her closely.

  “Yes, Mother, whatever you say,” she singsonged, failing in her attempt to make her mother laugh. She dried her hands and gave Margo a smile meant to appease. “Don’t let me nap too long, or I’ll never get to sleep tonight.”

  “A long nap wouldn’t hurt you one bit. You seem to ignore the fact that you’ve got this baby to think of.”

  Daria put a hand on her bulging stomach. “This baby is kind of hard to ignore, Mom,” she snapped. She left the room before Margo could respond. She knew she was behaving like an ill-tempered child, but she couldn’t even bring herself to care.

  She had tried so hard to get through this day—her first Valentine’s Day without her sweetheart—without being maudlin. But her heart was breaking. Everything reminded her of Nate—the love songs on the radio, the frosted sugar cookies he’d loved so much, even the roses her father had bought for her. It was a sweet gesture, but it was also a painful reminder of the flowers she would never again receive from her husband.

  She went to her room and lay down on top of the quilt on her bed. Her first week at home she had ended up sleeping on the floor beside this bed each night, unable to get used to the height of the four-poster and the softness of the mattress. How Nate would have laughed at that after all her complaining about sleeping on the floor in Timoné. She bit her lip and tried to think of something else. But thoughts of Nate intruded, and finally she allowed them free rein, wallowing in self-pity.

  She rolled to her side, punching her pillow in anger and frustration. Before she could raise her fist again, an acute cramp sliced through her back. She took in a sharp breath and instinctively cradled her belly in her hands. She lay on her side, utterly still, listening to the rapid beating of her own heart, waiting for the pain to fade. It passed, but within minutes another spasm swept over her. Fear gripped her, and she temporarily forgot Nathan as she turned toward the clock on her nightstand and watched the second hand creep around the face—once, twice, seven times, and then another contraction began its crescendo.