Seasons of Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #4) (23 page)

S
he hath done what she could,’” Pastor Parker Jones quoted. “Mark fourteen, verse eight.

“Our Sister Finnery,” he said, “reminds me of the woman with the alabaster box of ointment, who broke it and poured its contents on the head of the Master. The Bible hints that it was all she was able to do—she did
what she could.
We know she did it freely, in spite of criticism.”

The mourners—the good people of Bliss—nodded. A few wiped eyes damp with ready tears, a few murmured amen.

“Sister Finnery did what she could,” Parker Jones continued, his own voice thick with the depth of his feeling. “It may not have been what other followers of Jesus did for Him, but she offered the Lord her best. Who among us will ever forget her vibrant witness? I, as her pastor, was often uplifted and encouraged by her simple words of cheer when we met. We
all benefited from her Wednesday night testimonies. Even the hard places that she faced, life’s difficult times, were touched and changed by her courage and her tenacious grip on God’s promises.”

In the little white schoolhouse, Jake, bereaved son, with no family member to comfort and sustain him, drooped sadly on a straight-backed chair in the front row, set out just ahead of the desks, sighing deeply from time to time. At his sides, two of the ladies of the congregation offered support, and other friends sat close by and all around, ready to do what they could but feeling sadly inadequate at this time of parting. Almost without exception they had been through the experience—and still they had no words to lighten the sorrow of others when it came to saying good-bye to a loved one.

“Jesus said that wherever the gospel would be preached, this woman’s act—anointing Him for His burial—would be remembered. And we remember it today, even as He said. And it helps us. It helps us think on the life and deeds of another good woman—Sister Grace Finnery. And we know that God, even now, is welcoming her to her heavenly home. Just think of it, folks! Think of the heavenly home that Jesus has been preparing—”

Heads lifted, quivering lips were stilled; eyes saw beyond the battered desks, the handmade coffin, the work-worn congregation, and they envisioned, with the pastor, the “land that is fairer than day” and rejoiced, “and by faith we can see it afar.”

They rose to their feet and sang it together . . .

In the sweet by and by,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore . . .

It was their promise and pledge.

Middle of the week though it was (bodies did not keep well in the heat of summer, and burials were speedy), the people of Bliss had laid aside the pressing need to gather and store before winter’s icy blast would send them, like beavers, to shelter
for the long, cold season. Pity the family with a death in winter! Often the corpse was shrouded and laid in state in a shed or granary, there to await the kinder, gentler season of spring, when spades went into the ground at last. And for reasons more than sowing; the Bliss cemetery population burgeoned, come spring.

His brief funeral talk concluded and the final prayer uttered, Parker Jones stepped to the side of Jake Finnery, there to speak words of comfort and consolation.

Arms straining and muscles bulging in the tight sleeves of their “Sunday” suits, four neighbors hefted the coffin of Sister Finnery to their shoulders and carried it through the schoolhouse and the hushed crowd, outside, and to a waiting wagon.

Parker Jones rode with Jake Finnery. What their conversation was on the trip to the cemetery, no one ever knew. But when they arrived, Jake’s shoulders were back and his head up, and his puffed eyes, waiting one more spate of tears at the interment, were filled with peace. Parker himself was pale, worn, as though he had poured his strength into all that had been done this day and yet remained to be done.

“Ashes to ashes . . .” he said, and Jake and others dropped a handful of good Saskatchewan soil into the gaping hole wherein the coffin rested, reminding one and all of their mortality. So little time, so much to do! They turned as one person back to the heavy burden of living. . . .

Molly, along with her parents, stood silently at the side of the grave, sharing the moment of final parting with their neighbor and friend, Jake Finnery. Because the Finnery house was now so bereft, so vacant, the meal that followed such an occasion would be transferred to the Morrison home. Molly would need to hurry away from the cemetery to reach home before the crowd, to help Mam, her grandmother who had remained at home, put the finishing touches on the repast.

Before she moved to the family wagon, Molly turned toward Parker and found herself hesitating. Ordinarily she would have
moved, confident and sure, to Parker’s side, to squeeze his hand or pat his arm.
I’m here
, the touch would say,
and I care
.

But something, somehow, someway, had changed. Her very hesitation spoke of it. Grief, that was not for the day’s bereavement, touched her eyes.

Silly!
she said sternly and silently, reproaching herself for her own foolish imaginings, and she took a step toward Parker Jones.

Stepped, and stopped. Stepped toward Parker and the face he raised toward her, lit with welcome. Stopped when Vivian Condon moved, lightly and quickly in between, her attention fixed on the minister.

It was, after all, Vivian’s hand that rested lightly, confidently, on the arm of Parker Jones. It was Vivian’s face that turned up to his; it was her voice that stopped his move toward Jake and the Finnery rig.

To be honest, Parker turned startled eyes, perhaps guarded eyes, on the young woman who stood looking up at him, coquettish in spite of the occasion. This much Molly saw before she turned away.

“Do you remember—” Vivian began, almost intimately.

Parker’s attention turned reluctantly from Molly to Vivian.

“Remember,” she continued confidingly, “I mentioned that I had something to talk to you about? Well, now that this . . .”—and her hand waved to include people and cemetery and grave—“is over and done with, I would like so much to continue with the topic . . . which is—
very
important. Truly,” she said persuasively, noting Parker’s hesitation, “you’ll find it so. I know you will.”

“Today,” Parker said, polite but firm, “is not a good day for it.” The girl’s persistence in the face of his duty toward Jake and his parishioners was surprising! Obviously she had little or no understanding of ecclesiastical concerns—

“Of course,” she said smoothly, quickly, “I know you have grave responsibilities—
grave
responsibilities . . . oh!” and
Vivian put a gloved hand to her mouth to stifle the indiscretion that, she seemed to confess, was most naughty of her.

Parker Jones watched the slim back of Molly Morrison out of sight and felt a fury toward this stranger to the community who, by her very presence, had rather successfully exacerbated the restlessness he was already feeling in regard to his call to the ministry.

Under the gaze of nearby Herkimer Pinkard, watching with keen eyes from the farther side of his horse, Parker managed, gently enough, to remove the clinging hand from his arm, and say, “Another time, Miss Condon—Vivian. Now I really must go; Jake Finnery needs me, I believe.”

“But we
will
talk, won’t we?” she persisted. “Perhaps when we all get to the Morrisons’. Would that be a good time to talk . . . later on?”

“Yes, of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I believe your uncle and aunt are waiting for you.”

Parker turned toward Jake, who was receiving the last hugs and damp sympathies of the dispersing group, and together they mounted his buggy and wended their way toward the Morrison homestead. The day was flitting away, and soon every male there, and most females, would be called to the urgency of the chores awaiting them. Life would go on for these who remained in the bush, though one of their number had exchanged her cross for her crown. “Remember Sister Finnery . . .” they would say, and say it less and less as the days came and went and as the immediate burdens of life dimmed their vision of things other-worldly.

“Allow me,” a masculine voice said in Vivian’s ear.

Startled, about to clamber into her uncle’s wagon where Bly and Beatrice waited, Vivian’s head jerked around to see at her side the large form of Herkimer Pinkard.

Reaching a callused, hairy hand, Herkimer took hold of Vivian’s elbow, firmly gripping it and lifting, helping her to the hub of the wagon wheel and on up over the wheel into the
wagon box. Her assent was so fast it could almost be compared to dandelion fluff being tossed into the air.

Vivian’s hat, set awry by the motion, was tipped over one eye, an eye that was quickly changing from startled to angry.

“I’ll thank you—” she spluttered, then stopped in the face of Herkimer’s innocent expression.

“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” he said politely, doffing his hat and stepping back. “I expect I’ll be seeing you over at the Morrison place.”

“Nice fellow, Pinkard,” her uncle said reflectively as Vivian breathed deeply a few times and settled herself on the wagon seat.

“He’s nothing but a bumpkin, a country bumpkin!” Vivian fumed. Then, noting a strange expression on Uncle Bly’s face, added quickly, “Not that the country has anything to do with it. He’d be a bumpkin no matter where he was . . .”

“Maybe,” Bly said briefly, “maybe not.”

At any rate, Herkimer’s buggy followed the Condon wagon in the small cortege making its way from the cemetery to the Morrison home and the abundance spread there. Glancing back once, Vivian was chagrined to have Herkimer lift his head, smile largely, and wave, almost coyly.

“Yokel . . .” she muttered, her face flushing.

Beatrice, at Vivian’s side, looked uncomfortable, and Vivian subsided. Why had she come to the funeral anyway! She didn’t know the bereaved man and had only seen the deceased woman from across the room at church. Vivian sighed. What a bore—when attending a funeral offered entertainment in the dullness of one’s existence! And yet it had given her the opportunity to speak to the good-looking man of the cloth—Parker Jones, a challenge if she had ever met one.

Parker Jones’s integrity and moral ethics were part of that challenge. Here was a man who professed virtue, honor, scruples—but underneath, would he be like the men of the world who were part of her circle back home?

Vivian, not accustomed to challenges, was becoming a little weary of this one and the slowness of the progress she had made. If the handsome minister could not be wooed and won by feminine wiles, what would it take? Money? Prestige?

“Hmmmm . . .” Vivian half-crooned, wondering, thinking, planning.

The wagon made its rattling journey along a Bliss road hemmed in places by pressing bush, open in other areas to fields becoming burnished with golden grain, and the girl was oblivious to it all. She fretted over the dust that rose and settled on her clothes and was blind to the goldenrod nodding by the side of the road; she waved away the flies that accompanied the horses and the wagon and was deaf to the plaintive, penetrating cry of the killdeer; she wrinkled her elegant nose over the smell of warm horse flesh while the potpourri of the bush escaped her.

How could Herkimer, who had been behind them, get his horse tied up at the Morrison fence and be at the side of the Condon wagon when Vivian was ready to descend? Yet he was. His big face beaming, his red-gold beard glinting in the sunshine, his shoulders covered with dust, his hat on the back of his head, he reached a hand upward to the girl preparing to climb down, a move as treacherous as the climb up had been. Pausing, she saw, this time, how the sun glistened on the thick mat of hair on the back of his hand and shuddered visibly.

Heavens! What a bull moose he was!

If there was a glint in Herkimer’s eyes, Vivian, in her agitation, failed to notice it.

Holding to the wagon she ignored the hand and reached a leg over the side, furious that he should stand there and watch her in this undignified pose. Why couldn’t these rubes have carriages like civilized folk!

She should have taken his hand. Her foot, searching for the hub, missed it, and with a small shriek she plummeted toward the ground. Plummeted and would have fallen except for the strong arms of Herkimer Pinkard.

“Whoops!” he said, catching her, holding her . . .

“Let me down!” she ordered, her hat atilt once again, her skirts in disarray, her face flushed and damp.

If Herkimer’s bushy beard touched the scarlet cheek for an instant before he set her on her feet, who was to say? No word of hers gave it away, and no one at all noticed the reappearing glint in the narrowed eyes of the man.

“Careful!” her aunt instructed. “You could take a nasty tumble if you don’t watch!”

“There you are, Missy,” Herkimer said smoothly, setting the irate woman on her feet, standing back, his head cocked, his lips smiling, his eyes admiring.

Vivian, without waiting for her aunt and uncle, flounced her way into the house. Here people were already filling plates, some to return to the yard and seats set up there, some to stand around the walls, a few to find chairs.

Molly was busy at the table, helping fill plates, pouring drinks, engaged in conversation with the friends passing through the line. Nevertheless, she noted Vivian’s entrance and, in spite of herself, her heart sank. Clearly Vivian was looking for someone—Parker Jones, of course. For as soon as she spotted him she began weaving her way through the crowd toward the corner where he stood, leaning against the wall, watching Molly.

Watching Molly Morrison! Vivian’s lips tightened. As slender as she was, it was no chore to slip between people. It was a wonder, then, that Herkimer Pinkard, as large as he was, had, once again, managed to precede her. Vivian, within a few steps of her goal, found her nose pressed against a broad chest, a chest that smelled disgustingly of horse and man. Wrinkling that delicate feature she raised her gaze impatiently to find herself looking into the placid face of Herkimer. Again!

She stepped to the right; Herkimer was there. She moved left; Herkimer was there.