Nazareth's Song (30 page)

“Oh, look there, yonder. Oz is in town. You always know when you see that Packard of his parked out in front of Fern’s place on a Friday night.”

Jeb held tightly to the steering wheel to keep Winona’s car from sliding into a ditch. The tires swerved, and he jerked the wheel to bring them right again.

“I’m sorry. Does that upset you?”

“Icy patch. You were saying—something about being bad?”

“You pay attention to me, Jeb, to what I’m saying. Not many fellas are good at that kind of thing.”

“Tell me about this professor friend. He broke your heart. I can tell that about you.”

“I never heard history told like he could tell it. That’s what first drew me to him. It was a stupid sophomore crush, and I look back on the way I behaved and I hate myself for allowing him to use me.”

“You never told your momma. Maybe you should. Amy seems like a sensible person.”

“Who tells Daddy everything. I can’t take the disappointment in his eyes. Daddy has this way of looking at me and making me feel like I’m twelve years old again. When I was twelve, he made me feel six. I can’t measure up to that person he imagines me to be.” She kissed Jeb on the side of the face and then sat back against her seat. “Jeb, can we talk about something else?”

“Tell me about this restaurant in Hope. You mentioned your friends have gone to it before?”

“It’s not a big restaurant. But they have beer. How long’s it been since you had a beer?”

“I just got my first pulpit and don’t plan to lose it.”

“I like that about you too. You got this religious conviction and this bad-boy image all rolled into one delicious package. One dance with me, Jeb, and one beer. You do that, and I’m all yours.”

“Winona, it’s not an easy thing you ask of me.” He remembered how he had sat by and watched Oz twirl Fern on the dance floor. “One dance, as long as none of our church members are around?”

“And a beer.”

“No beer. I’d never stop with only one.”

“One dance, then.” She allowed the fur to drop behind her and came up on one knee. She kissed Jeb on the corner of his mouth, twice, softly. Her hand came down his chest and rested on his thigh.

Jeb knew he should do the sensible thing: turn around and take Winona back home to join the folks for a plate of potatoes and peas. But he kept driving toward Hope and giving in to this girl’s imaginative sense of discovery. His hand dropped and rested on top of hers. Her skin was soft, and he decided that she smelled of something costly, like the kind of perfume a girl would pick up in Little Rock.

She lifted her hand from time to time to brush Jeb’s hair away from his forehead or make a soft circle around his earlobe with her finger. “You better know right now you’re in trouble with me, Jeb Nubey.”

She whispered most everything she said between Nazareth and Hope. Her words seeped into Jeb’s head like sweet icing melting on fresh-baked cake.

Automobiles filled the parking lot around the Candlelight Café and Bar, every chrome fender and headlight red and blue with neon from the flashing bar sign. Couples drifted in and out of barroom doors framed by tobacco halos.

Jeb helped Winona back into her wrap. The freezing air sent them both running inside and laughing at how the cold dictated their pace. Winona passed a couple of bills to a maître d’, who led them to a red booth in the restaurant’s farthest corner. She made a turn like a cat does before lying down and said, “No religious types around here.”

“Except for us,” said Jeb.

“You mean it, don’t you? I mean, this preacher act’s not an act.” She scooted next to Jeb in the booth and turned down the offer to check her coat.

“I could tell you anything, Winona. How would you know the difference?”

“By the way you treat me. We made it all the way to the restaurant, didn’t we?” She said to the waitress, “Two beers for starters.”

“I’ll order, if you don’t mind. Coffee for me. Beer for the lady, please.”

“May as well give me coffee too.” When the waitress left to turn in the order, Winona said, “You think one beer’s going to corrupt you?”

“How about if I don’t talk about your daddy’s business and you don’t talk about mine?” Jeb wearied of how Winona kept pointing out his constraint, like he was some provincial spinster. He remembered a time when he made the same judgment on others. He watched men around the bar using coy talk with the ladies and knew by heart all the best lines. The smell of tobacco and gin brought back memories of girls he had sweet talked and ditched just like this college teacher had done to Winona.

“You just take yourself seriously. I think it’s sweet.”

“You think that religion’s about being good, Winona.”

“Let’s decide what’s good to eat here.” She opened a menu.

Jeb pulled down her menu and made her look at him. “Have you ever read anything by Pascal?”

Winona lifted the menu back up. “Friday-night special looks good. Pascal. He’s that guy down in Florida that writes on playing the horses and such. I know a lot more than you think, Jeb.”

Jeb sighed. Fern would roll her eyes at Winona right about now while Blaise Pascal rolled over in his grave. He picked up his menu, then laid it down and said, “Winona, I don’t think I can send the Welbys away. Not to Pine Bluff or Timbuktu or anyplace.”

“No one is forcing you to do it, Jeb. It was nothing more than an option. You know about options, don’t you? You got two choices, so you pick one and see how things turn out. In your case, you got this string of kids to think about while you’re taking on this church and all its churchy business. So you weigh your options. My daddy does that when he makes a decision.” She closed her menu and smiled. The blue feathers in the flashing light made her look like a peacock.

“You’re like your daddy. You have a way of looking disappointed when things don’t go like you planned. Are the Welbys so bad for me?”

“They aren’t your kids, Jeb. One day you’re going to meet the girl of your dreams and she’ll want a family with you. Not someone else’s family.” Winona heard the small band on the other side of the bar strike up the first note. “Someone promised me a dance.”

Jeb followed Winona out onto the floor. But while she had played the aggressor all night, now he pulled her back next to him and took the lead. Winona laid her head against Jeb’s shoulder. She all but crumpled against him, demonstrating the same vulnerability he had sensed the first time they kissed out on the patio. He smelled her hair and felt the soft way her hand slipped into his.

“I’m sorry about how I’ve acted with you, Jeb. I really don’t throw myself at men.” She drew up and looked at him. “And I understand why I need God. It’s because he wants me to follow a better way than my own.”

Jeb nodded, half surprised at her sudden conversion.

“You ever lost your head and then wished you hadn’t?” she asked.

“It’s been a problem for me.”

“Nazareth’s not a place that offers a lot of options. Tonight, when I saw you standing in the doorway looking the way you look in that dark coat, I lost my head. I want to start over and act like we just met.”

“How many starts you need out of the gate before you’re satisfied?”

“Until I get it right with you.”

Jeb spun her around, and they wound up in front of a window that gave them a view of the crisp night. The sky was black, with stars frozen in place in a celestial lake.

Winona laughed and that caused Jeb to ask her what was funny.

“I’m the only girl in church that’s danced with the minister,” she said and then laughed again.

Jeb wondered how long a girl like her could keep secrets.

Jeb and Winona talked all the way back to Nazareth. She talked of owning a horse once and training for an equestrian show. Her vocabulary improved as she spoke of topics that interested her. When Jeb finally pulled into the Millses’ long drive, Winona let out a sigh and said, “You’ve given me the best gift I’ve had in a long time, Jeb. A memory I intend to keep.”

“Let me walk you in,” said Jeb. He helped her put on her fur again and escorted her all the way into the parlor. The only light in the room was the dim electric glow of a fake candlestick sconce. Horace and Amy Mills and all the household servants had retired for the night.

“Come up to my room.”

Jeb’s eyes gazed up the staircase. He wanted to oblige. “I’d better get back to the kids.”

Winona pulled off her feathered cap and fluffed out her curls. She looked impish in the dim glow. “You wanted to tell me something when you first picked me up tonight. I should have let you speak. Sometimes I’m bad about avoiding confrontation.”

“I’m sorry if I seemed confrontational.”

“I know about your meeting with my father. Word gets around fast when Horace Mills doesn’t get his way.”

“And you think I’m crazy for telling him no.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Jeb.”

“I didn’t take on this pulpit to be a delivery boy, Winona.”

“You’re the first man I’ve ever met that would stand up to Horace Mills.” She snugged up close to him again. “But I want you to know my daddy’s quite the persuasive man. He doesn’t take to ‘no’ often. I mean, he’s a gentleman and all, but he knows what he wants.”

“I can’t be used like that. I’ll never forget the look that Angel gave me when she found out I had delivered the Ace Timber offer to the Hoppers. At first I thought she didn’t understand adult things. But now I think she probably understood more than I give her credit for.”

“My daddy hasn’t done anything wrong, Jeb, if that’s what you’re saying. He’s an honest banker, and that’s hard to come by in these hard times. The Hoppers lost out because they didn’t think ahead.”

Winona sounded like a recording of her daddy. He pulled away from her. He made with an apology that sounded lame to him, but the hour was late and he was tired. “Time for me to go, Winona.”

“I don’t want you to leave, Jeb. You’re the best thing to come into my life in a long time.”

Jeb kissed her until she gently pulled away. “Dinner again next week?” he asked.

“Why wait?” Winona followed him to the door. Her face grew taut and the girlish waif disappeared. “Remember what I said about Daddy, Jeb. He has his job to do. He’ll see that it’s done right. You might consider honoring what he’s trying to do for this town and for Church in the Dell.”

“You’re a loyal daughter, Winona. But my loyalty has to be with people that need my help. Who will help them if I don’t?”

“The church must be doing well now, then, if you can help out the people that need it, as you say.”

“All thanks to your father. But everything ultimately belongs to the good Lord.”

“Pick your battles, is all I’m saying.” Her brows lifted in the center of her face. Anxiety never looked so pretty.

He kissed her once more good night and then braced for the freezing cold. As he climbed back into the old truck and pulled away, he could still smell Winona’s perfume on the cuffs of his sleeves. He saw her slender silhouette as she watched him from her window. Her windowpanes looked like bars from a distance, with Winona the comfortable captive. Jeb did not care how pretty she looked in feathers. He would not become a slave to Mills’s growing machine.

25

F
lorence Bernard dropped by with a list of things she needed to collect from those who could contribute to the Christmas social. She tapped outside the small room in the church where Jeb sat paying the bills. “Morning, Reverend. I’m here to pick up the money for the Christmas ham.”

Jeb stared, blank as a summer chalkboard.

“You remember the Christmas social, don’t you? I’m elected to pick up the Smithfield ham that you told us to order. Smithfield will want the rest of his money.”

Jeb stared at the figures in front of him. The offering had brought in exactly two dollars and twenty-one cents. No special gift from Horace Mills or Ace Timber. At the dismissal of the Sunday morning service, Horace had lingered politely at the back of the church until his gaze passed over Jeb like a cloud. He had offered a sympathetic smile. Without saying a word, he had sent a clear message to Jeb. Winona had smiled at him with a similar sympathy before being escorted from the church between her mother and father.

Jeb had risen at dawn to pore over the stack of bills, which included the light bill, the lumber that Jeb and Will had used to repair the front porch, and the monthly mortgage. Now the old radiator was about to sing its last song. After doling out a generous donation to the starving Wolvertons, the church bank account was sputtering to draw air. The remaining payment had come due on the floor, which was only half installed since Mills had paid just enough down on it to have the work started. The floor extended only across the front altar area, stopping two feet from the front pews. Children had been taking turns tossing marbles under the unfinished framing. Jeb had assumed the floor job would be paid off by Horace, since the project had been his brainchild. But his contribution was plainly withheld.

Angel had outgrown her shoes, and all three children needed new stockings. With the potatoes half gone and the pantry stock dwindling, Jeb did not know how he would pay the mortgage. If he asked the bank for an extension, he would have to go through Horace Mills. His pay had been nothing this week, and he wondered how many more weeks he could go without an income from the church. “Morning, Florence. What’s that you’re asking?”

“I’ve come to collect from the church for the Christmas ham. You told me to order it. For a large group, I ordered an extra large one. But Smithfield wanted half down now and half when we pick it up in two weeks. You only gave the committee two dollars. He says it’s from a prize sow, so I can’t wait to carve it up and serve it. Everyone’s had it so bad this year; it’s going to lift spirits.”

“How much you need now, Florence?”

“It’s ten dollars and twenty cents, so half that, Reverend, or three dollars and ten, plus the two we already have.”

Jeb knew that would take more than this week’s entire offering. “Can Smithfield take half of half, or a couple of dollars down?”

“I’ll ask him.” Florence paused at the doorway. “Everything all right, Reverend? You look like someone died.”