I Will Send Rain (14 page)

Pastor Hardy paced in front of the congregation. There was a pulpit, but he never lasted long behind it. It was a plain church without stained glass, unadorned but for a large oak crucifix above the sanctuary.

Mrs. Turner turned to listen, sitting at the church's small fold-up organ, a gift from a pair of Swedish missionaries who had passed through town. Pastor Hardy's wife had been the organist back in Arkansas, and he missed her acutely whenever Mrs. Turner—her small spidery hands—would play the opening chords of “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” or “Abide with Me.” A warmth would travel up his spine and then fly off, leaving him more lonesome than ever. In front of his flock, he sometimes could feel the abyss of despair open beneath him. He feared these moments and felt the hand of the devil in them.

“The preacher says nothing. They keep walking,” Pastor Hardy said. He stopped and looked from face to hungry face. As the drought wore on, his people had thinned and aged, desperate for succor.

“They walk until the preacher sees a child playing in the dirt. The preacher says to the soap maker, ‘Look at that child. You say that soap makes people clean, but see the dirt on that boy. What good is soap? With all the soap in the world, the child is still filthy. I wonder how effective soap is after all.'

“The soap maker stops. ‘But preacher,' he says, ‘soap cannot do anything unless it is used.'”

Pastor Hardy nodded and touched his temple. “And you know what that preacher says? He says, ‘Exactly.'”

Samuel Bell smiled. The Bells sat, as they did every Sunday, in the third pew. Pastor Hardy was glad to see Fred in attendance even though, behind his mask, he looked sickly. The pastor had not attended the rabbit slaughter, thankfully, but he was saddened to hear about the violence. Killing animals for food was one thing. A bloody frenzy was quite another.

“Faith requires action. Let me say that again. Faith requires action. It doesn't take much to listen. Listening to the Word is not enough.”

There were a few murmured assents in the audience. Samuel nodded.

“Listen to what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father.' Not all who profess themselves Christians shall be saved.” He stopped pacing. “Who among us is ready to heed the call?”

The congregation sat silent.

“I said, Who is ready to heed the call of our Blessed Savior?”

“I am,” came the weary reply.

“I can't hear you. And if I can't hear you, then certainly God can't hear you. Now say it louder now.”

“I am.” People sat up tall and looked straight at the preacher.

“Proclaim it. Louder.”

“I am!” A baby started crying, startled by the fervent response.

Pastor Hardy pressed two fingers to his lips for a moment and then began again.

“James says, ‘Obey God's message. Don't fool yourselves by just listening.' So I say to you today, don't fool yourself that the devil isn't pleased when you hear God and don't act.”

His congregation always pricked up their ears at invocations of the devil. He moved to the pulpit and lowered his voice.

“Let the Gospel be your guide in everything you do. Pray. Do good works. Follow the teachings of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. You do not exist without Him.”

Mrs. Turner struck the familiar opening bars and the congregation stood, needing no hymnals as they sang out words they had known since they were children.

Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

This was not her father's church. At times Annie missed the order, the rhythm of the same structure each week. The lighting of the candles on the communion table. The Lord's Prayer. The doxology. She missed the beauty and airiness of the building itself. The quiet bustle in the narthex before people funneled down the aisle to their seats. But out here there was the Church of the Holy Redeemer or nothing. The church itself was boxy and raw, stuffy in any weather. After a few years in the Panhandle, though, even the Lutherans relaxed a little and cast their lot with Pastor Hardy.

It had taken a week of bed rest and requests for the latest Krazy Kat comic strip for Fred to emerge, weakened but returned. He wore his mask out of the house with little reluctance. He wrote, “I am a bandit,” and then pointed his fingers like a gun, his eyes crinkled. Annie was brittle, Fred's illness a demon that would not cede its grip. He was better, but he was by no means well. He was still Fred with his fragile lungs. And now that Cy had abandoned Birdie without even a goodbye, she was a sad sack of potatoes, as silent as Fred.

“I'm sorry,” Annie had said to her.

“Are you?” she had shot back.

Annie had wanted to pull her on her lap then and stroke her hair, but Birdie was right, she wasn't really sorry. She was sorry for her daughter's pain. But glad that Birdie hadn't settled on her life at fifteen, hadn't tied herself to Mulehead before she had a chance to see anything else.

Samuel sang as if there were no one else in the church. He had a beautiful voice, that strong baritone, and Annie loved it still. She reached for his hand and held tight. He glanced at her and smiled as he sang. Each afternoon now, he went to the barn with clear-eyed purpose. She was glad, at least, that building the boat distracted him from his anxiety about the farm. He no longer stared out at his dying fields or ground his teeth at night or pored over what they owed, what they'd lost. Last night he had pulled her to him and she had not resisted. His hands tentative and gentle, his eyes seeking hers in the darkness. She felt comforted by his weight pressing her down and she closed her eyes and imagined his body a ballast—until he murmured, “Blessed be,” and rolled off onto his side of the bed. This is my family, she had told herself. This is good and right. She had tried to hold on to the tenderness she felt for her husband then, the warmth of his body inches from hers, but she kept seeing Jack Lily in the slanted sun of the Woodrows' bedroom, his eyes the color of coffee, his elated grin when they had finally taken a breath after that first kiss.

In the pew in front of her, she could see that a seam of Helen Mason's dress was coming loose, the fabric worn so thin she could see through it to the woman's freckles.

Pastor Hardy closed his eyes as the spirit moved him, hands outstretched.

“The Kingdom of Heaven awaits all who do God's work,” he said. “Now hear it. Feel it. The Lord is my light and my salvation—hah—the Lord is my strength and my song—hah—I will praise him—hah—I will exalt him—hah—the Lord is God and He has made his light shine upon us—hah—be our strength O Lord in these times of great distress—hah—our everlasting light. Praise our heavenly father. Can I hear an Amen?”

“Amen,” Annie said.

*   *   *

A
T
R
UTH'S,
S
AMUEL
sat at the bar, the midday sun leaking in through the small window. He'd come in a few times over the last weeks to talk harvest with some of the others, to unburden his mind of churning thoughts about the flood. The steam box was ready, and he was eager to have Fred well again, back working beside him. But Samuel had moments of wishing he had not been called. He wasn't proud of those thoughts, but sometimes he wanted to just be a regular farmer again. Here at the bar it was a relief to be, for an hour or so, just like everybody else.

“Olafson seen them up near Kenton. Kid on a mattress on top of a truckload. Had a goat in a pen jerry-rigged to the running board. The boy was retying the back,” his neighbor Ford said.

“I'd gone to see Stew days ago,” Samuel said. “Didn't let on.”

“What'd he say to Olafson?” Jensen asked.

“Nothing much. Said they were out of luck here. Heard there were farms needing help in California. Going through Colorado for some reason, then down to 66.”

“They had all their cattle shot, I know that. Took the thirteen dollars a head on six good ones, a dollar on the rest,” Samuel said.

“Anyone know they was heading out?”

“A surprise to me,” Samuel said. “Even to Birdie. Cy never said anything to her.”

The men wagged their heads.

“Had a cousin took off from Dalhart. Haven't heard from him since.”

Families had begun leaving in year two of the drought but it took a while before anyone realized it would be an exodus. Where did they go? What did they find? It was all rumor, conjecture, California as exotic and unknowable as Calcutta.

“Word is they end up picking peaches for pennies.”

“It's been a long time since I had a peach. Remember those cobblers Mrs. Turner used to make for church social?”

“Me and Garland Mitchell once saw Mrs. Turner in all her glory,” Ford said.

“Good Lord. She must be up near seventy,” Samuel said.

“Thirty-some-odd years ago. We rode out that way on two of Mitchell's horses, back when there was bluegill in the Cimarron. Came up on her coming out of the river. Buck naked. Water running off her, shining in the sun. Man, oh man.” Ford laughed a little and sipped the dregs of his beer.

“She see you?” Jensen asked.

“We were downwind. Hid by yuccas. But I'm not convinced she didn't know we were there. She took her sweet time and shook out her hair. Long and reddish back in those days. Skin like new milk.”

“No wonder you remember the cobbler,” Jensen said.

“A finer woman I never did see.”

“I won't tell your missus.”

“All she needs is something else to harp at me for. ‘Stop all the drinking.' ‘Go to church.' ‘Apply for the relief.'”

“I'll never think of Mrs. Turner the same again,” Samuel said, the alcohol fuzzing his tongue.

“You're welcome.”

“How'd it get up on noon so fast? Eight more hours before I can turn in,” Jensen said.

“Say, what was Olafson doing out there, anyway? Pretty far from Beaver Flats,” Samuel said.

“Driving the dinosaur diggers around.”

“The what?”

“They think there's bones out there. Want to dig them up.”

“They want to dig, come out to my place,” Jensen said. “I've got some posts need digging out.”

“Listen up,” Ruth called over the chatter, hitting a fork against a glass. “A roller's been spotted about thirty miles southeast out near Texoma.”

“Cover your beer, boys, here comes another one.”

*   *   *

I
T WAS HARVEST
time—had been for weeks. No one in the county felt rushed to pull in the sorry yield. What kernels had emerged were a little soft, but there seemed no reason to believe they would mature further without rain. So Samuel prayed on it, then oiled the combine and hitched it to the tractor and told Annie to keep the coffee brewing and the lemonade cold. There was no money to hire out a reliever, so Samuel told Birdie to get on her dungarees and rest up, because she would be driving shifts. Fred sulked because he wouldn't get a chance.

In those first years they'd had the draft horses, pulling the riding plow to make the furrows, the harrow to break up clumps, and the cutter for harvest. When the wheat was ripe, it was cut, run through the binder, and tied up into bundles, which were kicked off into the mowed windrows. Then in the evenings, they would go out and put the bundles up in piles so they could dry out. That sweet grassy smell on the field, quiet except for birds, the mix of pride for what was done and nerves for what wasn't. In the good years, those evenings were enough to bring tears to Samuel's eyes.

He loved the charge of the first bundle in the thresher maw, the loud buzz as the wheat was separated from the straw, the chaff against a hot sky, and how by the end of the day, the prickly remnants stuck everywhere, even, somehow, between his toes. Farmers came together and worked in crews, feasting from meals the wives laid out, platters of fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, beans and squash, bread and butter, peach pie and strawberry shortcake.

In 1924 he had bought a John Deere D tractor. Starting the tractor was always a joy to him, a reminder of what God and the farm had provided. Open the petcock over the valve and turn the flywheel, which would suck the gas in, and it would fire. Shut the little petcock off. And when it warmed up a little, turn it from gasoline over to kerosene and it was good to run on and on. In the boom years, he'd traded up for a Case tractor with a front crank. And now he had the combine, which he still owed on.

There was no stopping technology. What used to take five hours now took one. But Samuel missed the simplicity of the horses. With horses, and the deeper furrows made by the plow, he thought now, the topsoil might have had more chance at holding.

The tractor engine roared and groaned as it towed the combine over the rutted land to the fields. Samuel was sweating already and it was not yet eight. With Birdie covering while he ate and emptied the grain tank, he hoped to do thirty acres today.

Praise the Lord for this harvest, he said. Bless us with wheat.

Annie came out and waved. The sight of her as he set out lifted his spirits. Since Fred's collapse, she had been different toward him, placing her hand on his arm at the dinner table, leaving a sandwich for him when he came back from the barn. They didn't speak of the boat, but in the week leading up to harvest, he felt her opening up to it, to him. The feel of her at night was new and familiar at the same time. She was thinner, more angular than she'd been as a younger woman, but her skin was softer, her touch gentler, and he was grateful. She kept her nightgown on, as she always did, but she moved with him instead of lying still. He had looked at other women, his head turned by beauty like any other man's, but he'd never really coveted another. With Annie there always seemed more to figure out, and it kept him wanting.