Rachel's Prayer (17 page)

Then Dad had read in the
Times Leader
newspaper that the Arnold’s Store in Mcleansboro would be having an Independence Day window honoring the servicemen. They wanted pictures brought in of all the young men from around our area serving in the military.

“Robert sent his pictures just in time,” I told my folks. “We can take them in to be in the window, can’t we?”

“So long as we get them back,” Mom said with a peculiar kind of lonely sound in her voice. She’d held Robert’s picture a long time when we first got it. Then she’d put it on the mantel, where he seemed to be looking over everything that happened in the sitting room. All this time, Mom hadn’t seemed to be very bothered over Robert being gone, but from the way she treasured that picture, I guessed that she was.

I walked over to the Hammonds’ place that same evening to tell Rorey and her father about the Independence Day window and get pictures of Kirk and Joe, because the pictures we had of them weren’t so close up and nice as a couple that Mr. Hammond had sitting on a shelf.

I was almost to the house when Rorey came running out practically screaming. At first I was scared to pieces that something terrible had happened. But Rorey was so excited to see me she was practically having conniptions right there on the porch.

“Oh, Sarah! Sarah! Wait’ll you see! I got a letter today! I just got home! Oh, Sarah, how did you know I wanted to tell you! I was just gonna run over there, but Pa tol’ me I oughta at least help Emmie put some vittles on the table!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me in the house so hard I thought my arm would come off. Mr. Hammond wasn’t anywhere in sight. Emma Grace was in the kitchen wearing an old apron that made her look far too little. She was stirring something in a big bowl. She looked over at me with a funny look on her face but didn’t say a word.

“Oh, Sarah! Wait’ll you hear! It’s the most wonder-fullest thing—”

She plunked me in a chair and spun around to grab a letter that had been stuck under the Bible up on the shelf.

“What in the world—” I started to ask, but she didn’t even hear me.

“Oh, Sarah! I’m gonna get married! Just looky at this! Did you ever see anything so fine! Lester wrote it his-self and put little hearts on the paper! Pa was so happy he went to tell it around, I guess. Didn’t he go to your house?”

“No.”

She thrust the letter in front of me but didn’t let it loose from her hands. “You want I should read it for you, Sarah? He’s done proposed! He really did!”

I just sat for a minute, wondering how in the world I was supposed to react. Rorey was beside herself, she was so happy about this. But to me, Lester was still a lout. Him marrying a friend that was practically like family was almost as distasteful a notion as I could have come up with. Maybe Emmie felt the same way. Maybe their pa did too. I wondered for a minute where he’d gone, but Rorey didn’t give me half a second to think anymore about that.

“My dearest Rorey Jeanine,” she started reading, and already I could hardly stomach the words. I couldn’t picture Lester writing them. I couldn’t picture him standing in the church in front of everybody we knew, kissing his bride. I wondered how long since he’d been in a church, and if he’d ever choose to go again once he got married.

“I can’t stop thinkin’ about you since your last letter,” Rorey read on. “I put one a’ your pictures in my pocket an’ the other under my pillow so’s you’ll be near me all the time. Having nothin’ of you to hold ’cept your pictures has made me think a awful lot, and I been missing you fierce. I decided, Rorey Jeanine, that you’re the girl for me, and I hope you feel the same way. I know we’ve talked like that before, but this time I mean it. I want you to be my wife. Please write back as soon as you can and tell me yes ’cause I love you up and down and sideways.”

Rorey stopped and took a deep breath. She looked like she was gonna swoon. “Oh, Sarah! Ain’t that the greatest thing you ever heard? Lester’s what they call a born romantic. He’s so . . . he’s so . . .”

“Lonely,” I put it, without really thinking about it.

“Well, of course he’s lonely! So am I! Wouldn’t you be if the one you loved was far away? Honestly, Sarah, sometimes I wonder about you. Don’t you understand nothin’ ’bout romantic things?”

“Maybe not.”

“Well, you’re happy for me, ain’t you? I wish I hadn’t missed the mail going out today. It’s a shame to have to wait till tomorrow to answer a letter like this! I’m gonna write ‘yes’ ten or twenty times real big and then put double hearts all around the page! Will you be my maid of honor, Sarah? I can’t wait till he comes home! I’m gonna start makin’ plans now, so we don’t have to wait a minute longer than necessary. Do you think he wrote his mama? Should I go over there and show her this letter?”

“I’m sure he’ll tell her, Rorey.”

“How’d you know to come over? Did he tell Robert? Did you get a letter today too?”

“I came over to get a picture of Joe and Kirk for the special display they’re putting in the Arnold’s store window for Independence Day. We’ve got real nice pictures of Robert and Willy, but the ones your pa has of Kirk and Joe are better.”

“They’re putting up their pictures? Oh, I gotta find one of Lester too! Do you think his mama knows about this?”

“If she takes the paper.”

“Oh, Sarah. They wouldn’t have no paper. You know that. They can’t afford decent shoe leather. I better go an’ tell Mrs. Turrey right after supper. She’ll want to include Lester. Do you know she’s really proud?”

I didn’t know much of anything about Mrs. Turrey except for what had been talked around by folks who say they’re giving you something to pray about. But I figured most of what was said was true, so maybe the whole Turrey family needed something to be proud of. “I think it’s a fine idea to make sure they know,” I told Rorey, but she looked at me a little when I stopped.

“Ain’t you gonna say you’re happy for me?”

“Oh, Rorey. You know how I’ve felt all along. I want you to be happy, but I’m just not so sure about Lester. At least he wrote a swell letter. And him saying that this time he means it leads me to think that at least he’s been considering his ways and he probably means well by you.”

“Well. I guess that’s the happiest reaction I can expect outta you,” she said sourly. “I should’ve known that.”

“I’m sorry, Rorey. It’s just hard for me to trust Lester. But I wish you well. I really do.”

“You’re gonna see, Sarah. He’s gonna make me the happiest woman in the whole world!”

I hoped she was right. I hoped everything would work out wonderfully for her and Lester if they went ahead and got married. Maybe he’d use his military training to get a good job and they’d have plenty of money and beautiful kids. Maybe Lester would go to church, think some more on his ways, and end up being a fine brother-in-law to Frank and the rest. Maybe. I couldn’t picture it. But then, none of that was up to me.

I went home with the photographs I came for, thinking plenty of thoughts about Rorey and all her silly ways since she’d become a teenager, fawning after one boy or another. Usually Lester. Her thinking always did come back to Lester, Lord only knows why. I couldn’t imagine myself ever being so boy crazy as Rorey was, but then maybe her pa was partly to blame for that. I remembered her telling me he’d said she could get married as young as she wanted to, it was all right with him. I’d thought that an awfully dangerous thing to tell a girl that was already a little wild in her thinking. My father would never tell me something like that. He’d said he expected me to finish school before I ever went out on a date, not that I ever really cared to go anyway. But maybe Dad’s attitude was part of the reason.

“You’ll have plenty of time to be a grown-up once you’re grown,” he’d said once. “There’s no reason to rush into tomorrow.”

Dad was smart about that kind of thing. I was glad he’d passed along good sense. But then I wondered. School was out. And I wasn’t going back. I guessed I could date now if I wanted to. But there wasn’t anybody I could think of that I was anxious to be with in that kind of way.

Rorey would call me backward. And maybe I was, a little bit. Maybe I was a little like Frank, who never even tried to be with girls. He just concentrated on his work and his family and church, and that was good enough for him. I guessed he and I could just be friends and talk over things that bothered us, and not worry about dates with anyone until we felt good and ready. God didn’t make us like Rorey. I could be thankful for that.

Maybe I should have thought a little more about Mr. Hammond that night. I told my parents all about Lester’s letter, but I didn’t mention a word about Rorey’s pa going anywhere until Mom asked me how he was taking the news.

“Rorey said he was happy and went to tell people. But I don’t know who, since he didn’t come here.”

He didn’t get home in time for supper either, we found out. He wasn’t home by bedtime, and Frank didn’t find him at Fraley’s or anywhere else he knew to look. He looked scared when he came to tell Dad about it. And I was ashamed that I hadn’t known to wonder. Mr. Hammond was unpredictable anymore. Like grease in a hot pan. Liable to stay still or jump out in any direction. Maybe he wasn’t so happy over the news after all.

18

Frank

I didn’t know how to let things rest. I couldn’t sleep with Pa gone off again. I didn’t even want to try. Lizbeth had gone home about a week and a half ago, thinkin’ things were as back to normal as they were going to get. Pa had assured her that he wasn’t thinkin’ nothing crazy, and I guess she’d felt pretty settled about it since he’d been actin’ all right.

But news of Lester Turrey proposing must have set him off again, though I wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t had any objection to Lester since things got back to normal and Lester helped do a little rebuilding after the fire. I would have thought Pa’d be happy about this.

Mr. Wortham was good enough to talk with me about some of the places Pa might’ve gone. Maybe even all the way to Dearing, to tell Sam and Thelma or Lizbeth and Ben the news. Mr. Wortham offered to drive in and see. I was grateful about that, and hopin’ he’d find him, since he’d be using the gas of his truck for somethin’ like this.

I was hoping to feel silly by morning over worryin’ ’bout it. After all, Pa was a grown man who just got news that was far from sad. Maybe he was celebratin’ with some friends I didn’t even know he’d felt close towards. Maybe he had some kind of surprise in mind for Rorey, though I couldn’t imagine what it might be.

Oh, Lord, direct my path.

I didn’t feel like going into town with Mr. Wortham. I went twice by Mama’s grave and once out to the machine shed where Pa spent some time alone sometimes. But he wasn’t on our place, and I wasn’t sure where to look. Bert’s dog Boomer followed me and Tulip out toward the Curtis Creek bridge and beyond that to the one-room schoolhouse. There wasn’t no reason in the world for Pa to come this way. But as we were going past, Boomer went running to the schoolhouse door. It was shut just like it was supposed to be, but Boomer was pawin’ and scratchin’ over something, so I got off our old horse and went walking up to the steps.

“Pa?”

Not a sound answered except Boomer’s antics, but I knew he didn’t act like that over nothin’.

“Is somebody here?” I yelled, but nobody answered me. I might have gone on, thinking Boomer was smellin’ nothing but mice, except I saw that the window on the west was standin’ open. School was let out for the year. There weren’t no way the schoolteacher would leave the window open like that. Squirrels or coons’d tear up things mighty quick. But somebody’d opened it, sure as the morning sun.

“Pa?” I called again, even though I knew it wouldn’t make a lick of sense for him to come here. The door was secured tight, so I went over to the window, wishing I had more of a way of seein’ in the dark. The moonlight was plenty good enough tonight for seein’ where I was going, but it was almost no help at all lookin’ into the dark schoolhouse.

I wondered if the new schoolteacher still kept matches and candles in the same place that Mrs. Post had kept them years back when I was coming here. I wondered if they might have left any behind when they cleaned up things at the end of the school year. Thinkin’ about sneakin’ in to check was so strange to me that I started backing away, wondering what was wrong with my head. But then I heard a noise. Just a funny shufflin’ noise coming from inside.

“Who’s in there? Speak up right now or I’m comin’ in to see.”

I don’t know why I didn’t just figure the open window was an accident and some animal had gotten in. I don’t know why I entertained the first notion that it could be my pa. But that was what I thought as I went up to the window again. Either that he didn’t hear me callin’ or he was too sloppy drunk to care.

“Pa? Why don’t you come home? Rorey gettin’ engaged ain’t nothin’ to worry over.”

I heard the same shuffling noise and quick as anything I boosted myself up and started head-first through the window. For a second I wondered what folks’d say if they seen me. Mrs. Post and the teachers since then’d all be fiery upset over me or anybody else sneakin’ into the schoolhouse this way. But there weren’t anybody out here to know about it right now except for whoever else was already in there.

“Tarnation, boy! Can’t you see clear to leave me alone a while?”

It was Pa, sure enough. Talking out of the dark. I shimmied one knee up to the windowsill and was halfway inside. “I can’t see you at all,” I called to him. “But what are you doin’ here? This is ’bout the craziest thing you ever—”

“Ah, shut up. If I was wantin’ to hear it, I’d a’ come home.”

I held my peace, wondering at him. He was talkin’ plain enough, but I knew he was drunk. Not so bad as sometimes, but I could smell the liquor now, and I knew. Quick as I could, I eased the rest of the way through the window and landed on the floor. There wasn’t much to this schoolhouse. Just the one classroom and a coatroom inside the door. I still couldn’t see Pa, but I could hear him a little bit, over by the woodstove in the middle of the room. I felt my way real careful to the teacher’s desk and fumbled to find a drawer handle.