(2005) Wrapped in Rain (15 page)

The day Miss Ella tried to take us to church, Mose had arrived, hovering in the shadows, watching over us. Looking back on it, I think he was there because he had a pretty good idea of what Rex would do when he found out Miss Ella intended to take us to church.

After Rex had left, Mose stood in the opening of the side door of the barn, staring out toward the driveway. He had my wooden Louisville Slugger in one hand and a small wood-splitting ax in the other. I could see the flexed muscles of his jaw and the flared nostrils of his nose. He didn't hear us coming, so when we got up to him, we heard him muttering to himself. We stood there a minute, and when he didn't notice us, I tugged on the pant leg of his clean Sunday suit.

"Dr. Mose, you chopping wood today for Mama Ella?"

"Huh?" Mose broke his trance on the driveway and tried to hide both hands behind his back. "What's that, Tuck?"

I pointed behind his back. "You want us to help you chop some wood for Miss Ella? We could stack it for you." Despite his tender touch with patients, Mose was powerful with an ax and rarely had to strike a piece twice to split it.

Mose smiled, held the bat out for us to see, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "No, boys, just picking up after you. Go on down and play. I'm going to"-he held the bat up and studied it "sand this handle down a little bit more, and then maybe we'll play some baseball later." He looked back toward the stables. "Right now, I need to tend to the horses. You two boys go on."

"Yes sir." Mose walked back in the barn, leaned my little bat in the corner, hung the ax on the wall, and then pulled his stethoscope out of his pocket and tried to look like he was listening to the horses' hearts.

Miss Ella never did take us to church-she kept her word even to Rex-but from the backseat of that car, we sat through ten thousand sermons. Every Sunday evening, and then once a week at a well-disguised and random outing, Miss Ella took us either to go grocery shopping or to get some ice cream at the Dairy Queen. For the record, we did both. Mutt and I were experts on the location of every item in a grocery store because Miss Ella gave us each a list and we'd fill it, and we could tell you to the penny the cost of one single scoop of plain vanilla and two large swirls with sprinkles. But that's not why we got in that car.

About the time we made it to the end of the driveway, Miss Ella would reach over and click the radio on. Up past the static, Pastor Danny Randall of Christ Church in Dothan was welcoming us back. If it was Sunday night, she'd tune that dial to the top end of the AM band and we'd listen to his live weekly broadcast. If it was a weeknight or even a weekday afternoon, Miss Ella would pull a cassette tape from her purse and insert it into the player. She was big on church and even bigger on preaching, but she didn't give two cents for most preachers other than Pastor Danny. "Child, I've studied the Word most my whole life, and I know what it says." She patted her purse. "It's misquoted more often than not, and the preachers that do aren't worth the powder it'd take to blow them up. Most pastors are heavy on the pepper and light on the steak. But not Pastor Danny. He gives you a bone with some meat on it."

Until I reached eighteen, I think Miss Ella bought every tape of every sermon that Pastor Danny ever made.

About once a month, during his announcement at the beginning of the program or his prayers at the end, he'd use our first names and we'd look at each other wide-eyed and amazed in the backseat of that hearse-looking Cadillac. I never could figure out how he knew so much about us, but then one Friday afternoon, I found Miss Ella stretching the phone cord into the pantry. I pressed my ear against the door and listened as she whispered her prayer requests to Pastor Danny's secretary.

Once we arrived at our location, be it the grocery store or the DQ parking lot, Miss Ella would unearth her Bible from inside her purse, open it to the correct chapter and verse, and we'd read along with Pastor Danny. By the time I reached high school, Miss Ella said that we'd read through the Bible five times.

When the sermon was over, Miss Ella would grab our hands; we'd form a circle and listen while Pastor Danny prayed. When he finished, she'd turn off the dial and then turn to one of us. "Okay, your turn." We'd pray, asking God to keep us safe and take the devil out of Rex, and then Miss Ella would pray and ask God to keep the devil out of us.

When I was twelve, she took me to Atlanta to see my father-dinner with the soulless man atop his Atlanta high-rise. Like Napoleon, he chose the spot because from it he could look down on all the worlds he'd conquered.

Miss Ella herded me through the elevator door like a mother hen cramming me in between the hips of fifteen different people, all carrying leather bags and wearing dark suits and unhappy faces. A couple had umbrellas. I looked down and saw thirty feet, all shiny, stiff, and uncomfortable looking. Between the tight space and the mixture of fifteen perfumes, aftershaves, and hairsprays, and the swinging movement of the elevator, I grew dizzy and lightheaded.

If Miss Ella had a vice, it was spending too much money on hats-she loved them-but Rex didn't pay her much more than minimum wage, so she was selective. I remember looking up through all those shoulders, elbows, arm bags, and red fingernails and seeing this bright yellow hat accentuated with a pheasant cock feather. Yellow and red amid a sea of gray. Miss Ella was like that. Light in the darkness.

When the elevator lifted off, so did Miss Ella. With a captive audience, she lit into them. "I'd like to take this opportunity to give a little gospel message. The Lord Jesus loves you and offers you forgiveness and an opportunity for repentance and asks you to follow in the apostles' teaching."

That woman was a piece of work. I looked around at all those faces and just smiled. Those unhappy people got sixty floors of gospel preaching whether they liked it or not. To this day, I'm convinced that half exited the elevator long before their floor arrived. And to this day, I think Miss Ella spent her whole life guarding three things with her life: Mutt, me, and that Book.

MOSE PRACTICED MEDICINE IN A LITTLE HOUSEturned-clinic just seven miles from Waverly, so growing up, my image of what a doctor is, does, and should be centered on him. Still does. When Miss Ella was teaching me to ride a bike and I flew over the handlebars, scraping my knees and busting open my lip, Mose sewed me up and put a Band-Aid on each knee. When Mutt had a fever that wouldn't break and soaked through two sets of sheets, Mose sat by the bed all night, listening through his stethoscope. And when Mutt woke up and asked for a popsicle, Mose went downstairs, picked through the box until he found three cherry-flavored ones, propped his feet up on the bed, and slurped with us. And finally, when I hurt my back and came home carrying my x-rays under my arm, Mose took one look, wiped away a tear, gave me a bear hug, and said, "Son, I loved to watch you play baseball."

Mose is the only man to ever hug me.

And when his sister got sick and she finally told him about the cancer, Mose told her she was a stubborn old woman, but that didn't stop him from bringing her breakfast and dinner every day or reading to her at night. Sometimes, he'd stay all night. After more than fifty years of doctoring, Mose sold his practice to a young doctor out of Montgomery and retired. And while he quit officially doctoring people, I discovered he still had a thing for horses.

Five years ago, I heard of a racetrack outside of Dallas with a stable of about eighty stud cutting horses. The owner had a reputation for breeding champion cutting horses for ranches across West Texas and other cowboy states. I spent a few days shooting the cutting horse competitions, the horses, and the cowboys who rode them.

When the horses turned three, the owner would run them in a few races, hang their ribbons around their necks, and then sell the semen or the horse for the right price. On a whim, he bought one Tennessee Walker and tried his luck but had none. A dark brown horse, black mane, seventeen hands high. He was magnificent. But he hated the track owner or he hated to show. Either way, he never won a thing. After a couple of shows and a lot of wasted money, the track owner tired, returned to his cutting horses, and quickly stuck the Tennessee Walker in a stall and started calling him "Glue." When he gave me the tour of his stables, he pointed to the horse and said, "That's Glue! 'Cause you need it to stay in the saddle, and it's what I ought to turn him into."

Over the next few days, I often found myself walking by Glue's stall. By the end of the weekend, Glue was sticking his head out the stall window and I was carrying carrots in my pocket. I casually inquired about a purchase price, and the track owner sold him on the spot for three thousand dollars. He even threw in two saddles and all the tack I would ever want. I paid a local cowboy to carry Glue and me back to Alabama, but I really had no plans for the horse. I just thought I'd let him roam the pasture because it was empty and Mose was bored. I figured the two would get along famously. And I was right. After a few months, Mose and Glue were inseparable. I told Mose, "Mose, he's half yours. Whether you want the front or back, it's up to you."

But then something happened that I wasn't expecting. A couple of local plantation owners stopped at the rail along side the paved road and inspected our horse. Mose was sitting atop the tractor, cutting the pasture grass, but stopped, leaned against the fence, and slipped his hands in the sides of his overalls.

"Excuse me sir," they said. "This your horse?"

"Well"-Mose laughed and tipped his hat back-"half of him. Other half belongs to the fellow that owns this field."

"Wonder if you two would be willing to stud him?"

Mose smiled. "I don't see why not, but"-Mose pointed to Glue-"you'd better ask him that." As it turned out, Glue didn't mind at all, and I soon discovered that the real quail-hunting enthusiasts, wanting a more authentic hunting experience, were willing to pay considerably to get it.

So Mose and I went into the stud business and put Glue to work. When I registered Glue in our names, formally renaming him `Waverly Rain,' I discovered his bloodline led to a five-time national champion show horse in four categories, including "Best All Around." So Mose and I raised the stud fee, word spread, and before too long, plantation owners from north Florida to North Carolina to Tennessee to Texas were shipping in their mares and treating Mose with respect, saying, "Yes sir, that'd be fine."

Five years later, Glue has sired eighty foals, and the schedule on the barn wall is booked as far forward as Mose cares to extend it. He got so tired of answering the phone that he bought an answering machine and began screening his calls. Prior to Glue's arrival, Mose had wondered openly about how to fill his retirement. But with stud fees at fifteen hundred a shot, split three ways-me, Mose, and the barn-Mose has had little trouble keeping active. Now, at eighty-one, Mose wakes every morning and walks down to the barn, where he puts on a pot of coffee, cooks a few biscuits, mucks the stalls, and sings to a horse named Glue.

I WANTED TO SLEEP UNTIL NOON BUT WOKE WITH THE sun. A difficult habit to break. Even when tired. My staccato thoughts were evidence of that. I ran three miles, showered, climbed out of the basement, and poured myself a cup of coffee.

The barn light was on, which meant Mose was doing the same. I walked into the barn and found Mose hunched over a pitchfork and singing Johnny Appleseed's song, "Oh, the Lord's been good to me, and so I thank the Lord ..." I tried to sneak up behind him, but Mose and I have been playing that game a long time. I got within five feet and he said, "If you're going to bring in renters, the least you can do is let me know so I might clean up my sister's house and make them feel welcome."

"Hey, Mose." I patted him on the shoulder.

"And if I'd have known you were going to have a lady visitor"-he ran his fingers underneath the straps of his faded blue overalls-"I'd have dressed up today."

If the sun shined on Waverly Hall, if it was able to break through the storm clouds that had socked in years ago, it now did so through Mose. Mose nodded toward the house, and his eyes spoke the question on the top of his tongue.