Whisper Town (26 page)

“No need to mention that to anyone, though.”

“No, sir. I slept for the whole next day. I was afraid of myself. Then I looked at my own face in the mirror. I wasn’t going
to turn into Frank Pella, I decided.”

“Lucky is proud of you, Ruben. When she talks about you, her whole face lights up,” said Jeb.

“I never thought any of us could love that baby or give it our name. You ought to see my daddy bouncing that little girl on
his knee, like she was his own.”

“She is his own.”

“Maybe she looks like me. I’ve taken to her, I’ll say that. Anyway, it’s getting dark and I promised my mother I’d be home
to help her cook peas and ham. I got my own recipe.” He laughed. “Someday I’m going to own my own restaurant.”

Jeb remembered how Lucky said she wanted to teach. “John and Vera have done well with you and your sisters, Ruben, in spite
of what they think. I see the future when I look into your eyes.”

“Don’t get all soft, Reverend. You’ll turn into Vera.” He stuck out his hand again.

Jeb threw his arms around Ruben and hugged him.

Fern had left cookies on the table next to Jeb’s bed along with a note that said, “I miss you so badly I could scream.” Angel
told him that Fern had waited at the parsonage an hour before going into his bedroom and then leaving.

He would go Saturday morning and wake her up at sunup, the worst part of the day in her estimation, but then he would make
it the best time. He ate one of the cookies, not one of her better batches, but the vanilla scent reminded him of the first
time he smelled her hair. He placed a cookie on his pillow and fell asleep.

Nothing could have awakened him, he decided, except something that might startle him out of his dream—something like a fire.
Even from his bed he saw the flame shoot up. He did not know if the blaze had ignited the whole woods, seeing as how it flared
up only for one astonishing moment that brought him upright, stumbling off the mattress and feeling in the dark for his trousers,
notching up his galluses. He called out for Willie, but then he had to go and wake him, telling him not to wake up Ida May.
Half-asleep, Willie followed him outside. He unquestioningly dragged a pail of water, as if he were carrying it out for a
washtub full of laundry or a Saturday bath.

Jeb hefted two pails and ran into the woods, and it seemed like a dream, like a foolish thing to do in the middle of the night.

“Where are we going?” Willie asked.

“Fire in the woods.”

“It’s cold. Woods are too wet.”

He realized Willie was right, but he saw the orange glow and kept pressing through the brambling brush, snagging naked brown
ivy until he came to the flaming tree, an oak flaming at the base. Jeb threw water onto the tree, and that is when he noticed
the shape of a man.

The man seemed to be part of the tree, but the water caused his eyes to come open and he said gently, “I thought you’d come.”

Jeb and Willie put out the fire and pulled Ruben Blessed away from the charred trunk. The ropes broke well off him and he
was surprisingly light to carry.

Willie could not speak at all, not when Jeb told him to run and fetch Angel to bring balms from the kitchen, or when Angel
came out of her room to ask him what was going on and what lay on the sofa that Jeb was crouched over, that thing that could
not be a man, yet was. Angel cried. She had trouble keeping her balance, dashing back and forth from the kitchen, and then,
when the cupboard ran bare of ointment, she said quietly, “I’m driving your truck to Fern’s. Then we’re going for Doc Forrester.”

“Get Fern first, that’s right,” Jeb kept saying, even after she ran out of the parsonage in her nightgown.

Ida May tiptoed into the parlor, soft as a moth, and then slumped against the doorpost and wailed.

Fern used tweezers to peel strips of clothing from Ruben’s skin. Angel kept burying her head in her hands; then she would
sit up, like a girl coming to the surface of a pond for air, and help Fern strip Ruben’s charred trousers from his legs.

Doc Forrester sent Willie and Ida May out of the room. He told Jeb, “It’s really bad, Reverend.”

“Do your best,” said Jeb.

“My wife went for the boy’s family. Fern here told us where they lived.” Dr. Forrester knelt next to Ruben. “Reverend says
you talked to him. Can you talk to me, Ruben? Can you hear me?”

“I hear good. My legs and hands feel like the pain is going out of them. You doing good by me, Doc.”

“Who did this?” said Forrester.

“I think they followed me this evening from Reverend’s place. I stopped for gas and that’s when they grabbed me from behind.
Can you hear me? My throat feels like it’s on fire.”

“We hear you, Ruben,” said Jeb.

“My momma won’t understand why I didn’t get home in time for her cooking,” he said.

“Who grabbed you, Ruben?” asked Jeb. “Was it Pella?”

“You know it was, Reverend. I made him mad, but when he tied me up, I told him that stocking over his face didn’t help his
looks none. I got to get home and make sure he doesn’t get to Lucky. Can you help me up?”

“Your family is coming here to see you, Ruben,” said Forrester. He told Fern to clean the burns on his legs with soapy water.

Fern kept swabbing, dropping cloths into a tub, wetting more clean cloths, and then she would push the hair out of her face
and go to work on Ruben’s legs.

“His left arm is broken,” said Forrester. “I’ll set it after we get you cleaned up,” he told Ruben.

“I fought them off but good. They tried to throw me in the hull of Frank’s car, but I fought them. If they hadn’t broken my
arm, they couldn’t have tried getting me into that hull.” He sucked in several breaths and said, “I hurt,” like it surprised
him.

“Pella’s not getting away with it,” said Jeb.

The sky lightened. Automobile lights searched through the woods and then shone into the parsonage windows.

Jeb opened the door. Vera Blessed ran for the front porch. Jeb met her on the steps. “Your son wants you, Vera.”

“Tell me my child’s going to live.” She sobbed.

Jeb once promised Vera he’d always tell her the truth. “Come inside. It’s cold out here.”

O
N MONDAY AFTERNOON WILLIE SAID HE
thought he saw Ruben standing out in the garden. When he talked about it over supper, Angel said she thought she saw him
too. They all decided Ruben had come to tell them good-bye.

The sun finally came out on Tuesday, warming the yellow sod, and it seemed like spring at the Hope Eternal Cemetery. Vera
kept saying that Ruben could not wait for spring to come, that he had wanted to wet his line, and that this was his way of
saying spring had come and he was the deliveryman.

Louie delivered the eulogy and then Jeb talked about Ruben’s last words and forgiveness. John gave a word over the grave and
then Vera and the girls each dropped a flower into the ground.

The ladies’ choir sang a song that Ruben once sang in church, a hymn that set Vera to crying again.

Lucky and Angel walked across the cemetery, taking off their sweaters and singing the “Balm of Gilead” song. They found it
catchy and kept singing it on the hill until the adults made them stop and come back for the meal at the church.

Someone had made peas and ham. Jeb ate from that bowl two or three times until he felt he might burst. Louie invited him into
his study and they closed the door.

“I guess you know that Myrtle and Lucky have adjusted well to home.”

“This is not the end, Louie. Frank Pella’s not getting away,” said Jeb.

“I can tell you’re used to getting things your way. If I had your confidence, I’d run for mayor.”

“We’ve been needing a new mayor. I know what you’re thinking. Frank Pella is gone, nothing can be done about it. Pella’s daddy
may have snuck him out of town, but that only makes him look guilty.”

“I don’t want to sound pessimistic, Jeb, but not all people love the way you love,” said Louie. “Not all come to justice.
Not all come to the cross.”

“The last thing I need is a sermon, Louie.”

“Vera told me how you came to God. You’re one of those Paul types—hard-to-come-along but then God slays you, and for the rest
of your days, you follow him around like a mongrel pup. That is very satisfying to know.”

“How God slew Jeb Nubey?”

“That you’re going to mellow with time.”

“I can’t imagine it.”

“Maybe you are a prophet?”

“What about you and the way you stand up to the monsters?”

“Stand and see the salvation of the
Lord
!” Louie laughed, and it was in an irritating manner that made him sound always right.

“You’ve given me a new view of redemption, Louie, I’ll say that,” said Jeb.

“I walk out on the sea of God’s peace, Good Reverend, and as long as I keep walking, his peace sustains me. Whether I stand
before a saint or a monster, I won’t sink.”

Jeb could not take his eyes off the altar. “Mind if I light those candles?”

“Long as you don’t try and sing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ You cannot sing, my brother.”

“No need to get bigheaded, Louie. I’ll only sing along with you. We sound good together.”

“Long’s you know I got the lead.” He started the chorus out. They sang until Jaunice opened the door and said they were disturbing
the sleeping babies.

“You can’t wake babies,” said Jeb. “They’re unforgiving as the dickens.” He had come to know a lot about children in spite
of his days as a bachelor.

Jeb waited outside the school on Wednesday. Cold air blew across the schoolyard, lifting like sheets, undulating and spitting
crystal flakes across the grass.

Fern saw him through the window and came out to meet him. She tied her white woolen cap under her chin and said, “Willie is
still quiet, but he pitched for stickball today. Don’t tell me it’s snowing again.”

“Smells like snow, feels like it,” he told her.

The air had that kind of frigid, whistling force, piercing through grab bag woolens. Fern moved closer, her posture suggesting,
perhaps to curious students, that she only used Reverend Nubey to block the wind and sleet.

“Fern, I keep waiting for things to get better, you know, as in a good life. Something that I can offer you that you deserve.”

She had gotten to where she listened without comment whenever he made this speech about waiting for the ship to dock.

“It came to me today that it might not ever get any better, that this Depression may never lift, that my house may always
be full of another man’s young.” He spread his arms, looking more like a big rooster instead of a savior, he thought. “What
I’m saying is, take a look at what you see and ask yourself if what you see is enough. I may never be perfect enough for us,
Fern.”

“I’m not perfect, Jeb. When you know that, you’ll know that what we have is enough for us.” She pulled his face close and
they kissed.

Snow fell down and covered the ground, turning white and erasing the trees and turning the roofs white.

Fern told Jeb she loved him while snow collected on her lashes and brows, with her lips turning blue, and with students banging
inside on the glass and taunting their teacher. “They say that all the heroes went into hiding in 1929, but I have seen a
hero of a different nature, and I think that is the way of true heroes. We all find our ways of surviving hard times, but
men like you use your life to hold the rest of us up. You make the rest of us poor slobs want to carry on, to not give up.”

“My baby knows what to say.” Jeb pressed his mouth against her lips, not caring if what she had said was true, but knowing
that if she believed it, he could believe that a cotton picker from Texas could fall asleep in jail and wake up in heaven.
Fern did look like an angel in the snow.

She tapped an envelope sticking out of his pocket. “You got a letter?”

Jeb pulled it out and handed it to her. “I almost forgot. I got a letter from Washington, D.C.”

“The president wants your advice,” she said. “It’s high time he asked.”

“Read it.” He handed her the letter.

She opened the letter and read it to herself. Her lashes lifted and she stared at Jeb, astonished.

Cherry blossoms do fall like snow on the Washington Mall. The clusters hung heavily on the branches, waving in the March wind,
scattering onto the heads of people and covering the ground.

The banner across the platform read
THE AMERICAN DREAM
and behind it Abe Lincoln looked down from his chair on his hill. The radio emcee Jerry Shaperi talked about Americans who
dream, and how the suffering rise from the ashes of diminished hope. He talked about a minister from Arkansas who had climbed
from past circumstances to become a hero to the hurting families of Nazareth, Arkansas. He quoted the Scriptures, saying,
“‘Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip saith unto him, ‘Come and see.’”
He introduced Jeb while a group of two hundred or so applauded, including Florence Bernard and Angel, who watched from down
front.

Jeb felt Fern’s hand against his back as he stood up and then took his place on the taped X behind the
American Dream
lectern. “I can’t imagine how out of all the essays submitted, a transplanted Texan’s shabby version of hope got picked,
but I’m grateful to you for asking me to come and read it to you.”

The crowd laughed and then applauded again.

“I call my essay for
The American Dream,
‘A Feast of Breakable Bread.’” Jeb read:

I have come to know a people cut from raw substance; alone, a ragged lot of individuals, but who, when fit together, form
a deep basket of human expectation. Expectation foments hope. We hope so well and see so far that we are renowned as giants
of hope. But even legends can stumble.

When Americans dream, we come to believe that who we are, or who we might become, is so tightly woven into the material of
dreams that when dreams fail, we faint for fear. But we are more than mere dreamers. Our reach can surpass even a grand expectation
when we know that sweet secret that can take us farther and higher than one human can imagine. This great mystery of humanity,
this elixir that can fill hungry stomachs and put tyrants out of business, holds the key to our success as a civilization.
What is this secret that holds so much sway over the human condition, yet is so easily overlooked? How do we unearth what
seems so deeply buried in human misery and suffering?