Whisper Town (18 page)

“I told him not to come to me anymore for my approval.”

“I love you, Fern. Let’s go to your place and do what we shouldn’t do.”

Her face pulled away from his. “Drive, Jeb.”

Jeb turned on the ignition and drove past the bank, circled back, and headed for Marvelous Crossing.

Fern’s head lay against his shoulder. She kept rubbing his leg and talking about how long she had waited for them to be together.
The moon looked like a disk, a pendulum hung in the air for Christmas Eve.

“I’ll have you all to myself.” She laughed. “Look, Nazareth, Jeb and Fern, finally together! Let’s give them something to
gossip about. You and me and no one to stop us.”

“You and me,” said Jeb. Her words “all to myself” stuck inside him like an ax in a stump. The headlights shone across the
bridge ahead. His foot came off the gas pedal. The car slowed. He braked and stopped them right in the middle of Marvelous
Crossing Bridge.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

The picture of Fern and him overflowed with too many other faces. Erasing all but two was hopeless. “You and me, Fern, and
a hungry baby,” he said. He waited for her to respond, but her smile thinned and she kept quiet. “Plus two teenage girls,
a young girl, and a boy who wants to grow up to be like a dad who abandoned him.”

Fern turned and looked out over the water. White Oak Lake reflected the moon in pieces, a winter wind blowing ripples across
the disk and slicing it up.

“I can’t give you anything you ask, Fern. Not a place of our own or time for just the two of us.”

“I don’t think I’ve asked for a thing.” She stroked his arm.

Both of them stared into the dark waters.

He started up the engine. “This is not the life I want for us, Fern. We can’t be alone, not really. The thing of it is, I
want you all to myself too.” He turned the wheel after passing over the bridge and drove past Long’s Pond and her cottage
and toward the parsonage.

Fern cried.

Jeb never knew how to tend to Fern’s tears. He drove them to the parsonage and parked. He climbed out and yelled for Willie
and Ida May to come out into the yard. “Come bring in Miss Coulter’s Christmas bags,” he told them.

Fern reached down into the floor to fidget with some invisible object and to hide her wet eyes. She kept her head down until
Willie and Ida May ran back inside, hugging her bags. When her head came up, she banged it against the dashboard.

Jeb opened her door and held his hand out to her. “Are you all right?”

She got out on her own. She walked past him.

“I made you mad.”

“You did the right thing, didn’t you?” She stopped at the foot of the steps. “Don’t you always do the right thing, Jeb Nubey?”
She went inside.

The moon had not dimmed or even clouded over. Jeb hated the sight of it. He grabbed the last bag and felt against his trousers’
pocket for her keys. His fingers struck against a small package. He had forgotten to give her the box with the locket.

Fern lingered dutifully. She finished pies and made sweet potatoes and put them in the icebox to keep for Christmas Day.

Jeb waited in the kitchen for some moment when she might incline her ear to allow him to explain what happened out on the
bridge.

Angel and Lucky never left the kitchen at the same time. The evening gave plenty of reason for levity, a reason to test food
and eat sugar cookie batter and tease Ida May about St. Nick.

“I heard Frank Pella was at the bank sometime this week and someone bashed his face,” said Angel. “I’d like to have seen it
for myself.”

“Someone got tired of that boy and give him what he needed.” Lucky rolled out the cookie dough. “You got any gumdrops?”

“On the table,” said Fern.

“Why you hate him so much?” asked Angel.

“You going to ruin Christmas with that kind of talk.” Lucky rolled out the gumdrops and cut them into shapes.

“I never seen that done,” said Angel. Lucky demonstrated how her grandmother had taught her to roll gumdrops out for cookie
decorations.

Fern gazed into the cake batter, not as much interested as staring beyond it.

“Miss Coulter has to give me a ride back to my truck, girls. You keep up the work and I’ll be back.”

Fern looked surprised. “I thought we would go after the truck tomorrow.”

“Tonight’s better.”

“I think I’d rather go home tonight. Today’s worn me out.”

Jeb saw how she wouldn’t look at him. He got up and put on his coat. “Wouldn’t want to bother you with a trip into town Christmas
Day, Fern.”

“He wants to get Miss Coulter alone, like lovers,” said Willie.

Lucky said “whoo-ooo!” while Angel told Willie to shut up.

Fern pulled her coat off the chair back and finally looked at Jeb, her face not as smooth and happy as when she came out of
the library. The silent stroll from the kitchen, across the parlor, and out into the cold yard made it even harder for Jeb
to speak. Fern asked for her keys.

“You going to leave me standing here, stranded?” Jeb asked.

“I feel like driving, that’s all. You can get in.”

They rode down the church drive, driving the two miles to the lake, and over Marvelous Crossing.

Ice formed on the windshield.

“I guess I’m a fool for messing up our evening.”

“You made me feel like I was throwing myself at you.”

“I want you to throw yourself at me, that’s the honest truth. It’s all I think about. You probably think I sit around drumming
up spiritual truths. I don’t. I have to ask forgiveness for the things I think about you.”

“You think about me all the time?”

“Only when I’m awake. Otherwise I just dream about you. I think about how you watch me from the pew and I’m careful not to
mangle doctrine, because I know you’ll know. I think of how you smell like clean linens drying in the sun and flowers on the
windowsill, and I don’t know how you do that in the winter,” he said.

Fern trembled.

“I remember how you taught me to think about things that I hadn’t thought about before. When I write, I find myself rewording
every sentence because when you read it, I want it to sound just right on your lips. You make me better than I should be.
I like me better when I see me through your eyes. I hate me worse when I make you cry.”

She parked behind his truck.

“Hold on.” He ran around to her side of the car. He looked up at the moon. Clouds covered all but a thin slice of silver.
Jeb opened her door.

Fern’s feet came out, one at a time, and she got out. Jeb pulled out the box. “This is not the big gift, the one I want to
give you when all of this chaos goes away.”

Fern held out her hand. “It’s snowing.”

Jeb handed her the box.

“You have to know things about me, Jeb. I love you in the middle of the chaos. When I’m with you, the chaos goes away. In
the middle of all of the clatter, you sing. I can welcome a bad day because of you.” She opened the rear door and pulled out
a heavy box. “Mine’s not the big gift either.”

Jeb hefted the box. “It feels like books.”

“For your library.”

He set the gift on the street.

“I don’t care what’s inside my box,” she said. “You’ve already given me what I wanted.” She looked at her ring, kissed Jeb,
and the snow fell. The night had lost its moon. Snow cast its own net for lovers. They sought warmth, one against the other.

The last week of December did not bring any better weather along with it. Angel caught the next cold and prayed God to take
it from her, but it lingered, settling in her throat and lungs.

Fern moved Angel to her place to get well on hot soup and tea with honey. Angel allowed it, along with Fern’s steady attention
to a chest poultice while maintaining her own usual posture of pride.

Two days before New Year’s Eve, Jeb restrung his banjo. He had nearly played it to death over Christmas. The picking soothed
Myrtle, quieting her before Lucky took her to bed.

Lucky let Myrtle fall asleep in the middle of the floor, the center bloom of an old quilt. Frost formed all over the windows
in the shape of winter flakes. The baby lay sprawled, holding a spoon in one hand, like she fell asleep waiting for dinner.

Lucky went out back to take a dip of snuff.

Someone knocked at the door.

Myrtle’s spoon hand fidgeted. Her lips pursed, shiny, as though she anticipated that Belinda might descend in her dreams to
bring succor from heaven.

Jeb opened the door in as quiet a manner as possible. “Reverend Williamson, come in.”

“I come to check on Lucky and that baby.” His voice quavered at the end of his sentences.

“Baby’s growing in spite of the fact our wet nurse quit on us. She had bigger fish to fry, according to her.”

“I expect so.”

“Some of us are getting over sickness, what with the wet weather.”

“I hate all this snow and sleet. You better keep that baby inside. Children is coming down with awful things these days.”
The preacher saw Myrtle and he grinned. “Lucky anywhere’s around?”

“She’ll be in soon.”

“Has she told you anything about her family, Reverend Nubey?”

“Told me about her sister, Jewel, and Ruben. I think he drops by, but he doesn’t come in,” said Jeb.

“Her brother has a thing about whites. I don’t think he approves of her living among the whites, not that he has anything
against you. Ruben’s had run-ins and not all of them his fault entirely.”

The kitchen door slammed closed.

“Ruben’s welcome in our home, same as Lucky.”

Lucky peered from the kitchen, and then she disappeared. The sound of water running in the kitchen ensued.

Jeb told her that her minister had dropped by. “She’s getting some water,” he said to the minister.

Lucky ran into the parlor and grabbed Williamson around the shoulders. He hugged her back and she pulled up a chair next to
him.

“You keeping yourself well, girl. Your folks will have to climb a ladder to kiss you if you get much taller.”

“Baby’s holding up her head and smiling when you look at her.”

“They do that, don’t they?” said Williamson.

Unlike most girls, Lucky spent the entire conversation talking about the baby instead of herself. Williamson answered and
asked her further questions and she talked like she was the baby expert. In the parsonage that would be true.

“I brought fresh salt pork for your New Year’s dinner.” Williamson held up a sack.

“Black-eyed peas and salt pork. Why everybody cook that on the first of the year anyway?” asked Lucky.

“Luck,” said Jeb.

“Reverend is right,” said Williamson.

Lucky took the sack into the kitchen.

Jeb leaned toward Williamson and said, “Any reason to believe Jewel Blessed has any ties to this baby?”

“You sharp as a tack, Preacher Nubey.”

Lucky came back.

Jeb waited while Williamson and Lucky said their good-byes.

“We’ll talk again soon?” Jeb wanted him to stay.

“Come see me at my church. We’ll talk some more.”

He put on his hat and said farewell to Jeb. “You an agent of the Lord, Reverend Nubey.”

“I can’t believe it’s another year gone past us,” said Fern. She sliced the salt pork and dropped it into the pot of peas.

Jeb gave her everything for the dinner. Angel sat up on Fern’s couch now. The pink circles under her eyes gave her the look
of a rabbit.

Will and Freda pulled up outside. Freda carried sweet rolls through the front door. Freda had invited her neighbors to come
and wanted to know if that was all right.

“More the merrier, Freda,” said Fern. She took Freda’s rolls.

“They’ll be another few minutes or so,” said Freda. “They’ve made up a mess of catfish.”

Jeb helped them off with their coats.

“That baby’s almost as big as you, Ida May,” said Freda.

Ida May rocked Myrtle while the others cooked.

“She’s only three months, come the tenth,” said Lucky. “I think she’ll be getting her teeth soon.”

“What’s her birthday again, Lucky?” asked Jeb.

“October tenth.”

Freda helped Fern cut up the corn bread for cooling.

Jeb stared at Lucky. She turned and left the room.

J
EB WAITED FOR LUCKY TO MAKE UP THE BOT
tles for the day on Friday. She needed enough formula to feed Myrtle until he could return in the evening with more of Doctor
Forrester’s special formula. He told her only that he would be gone for the day and to see to supper. He took along his banjo
to see if the new strings he ordered at Honeysack’s store would work.

Lucky did not ask him why he would be gone all day. She watched him leave without saying a whole lot of anything.

Jeb drove out of Nazareth. The morning chill never left the inside of the truck cab, even after he had been driving for thirty
minutes. A big sign shaped like a watermelon and painted red and green advertised a farmer’s market from at least two seasons
ago. The red had turned pale pink in the sun and the black seeds had grayed. The watermelon fields grayed too, swirls of dust
ghosting through the fields, with nothing rising unless it had first met a disintegrated state.

Jeb drove past a boarded-up church. A child’s bicycle frame lay out in front of the church, the tires taken some time ago.
Someone had painted across a board:
ASHES TO ASHES AND DUST TO DUST, HEADED FOR CALIFORNY OR BUST.

The Hope City Limits sign had a skirt of grass grown up around the post.

He made a stop to feed his truck with a little more gas. He asked the filling-station attendant how to go about finding Mt.
Zion Church. The man told him to stay on the highway and take a right on a street named Lowell. “Go right on that road into
colored town and you’ll see their church on the left.”

Jeb followed the highway and turned on Lowell. The neighborhood had taken a beating. Tin replaced roof shingles. One building’s
architecture suggested it started out as a house, but the sign nailed on the front said
MT. ZION CHURCH,
and underneath it read
MERCY FOR THE DOWNTRODDEN.