At the Scent of Water (28 page)

Twenty-nine

After leaving Diane, Mary did not drive to the interstate and home. She drove out of town, followed a meandering road until she reached a grove of trees, then pulled to the shoulder and stopped the car.

What would it feel like, she asked herself, to stop blaming herself? To forgive herself? How would it feel to release her guilt like a fluttering bird and watch it go flying away? And she knew, somehow, that even if she were to do that, she would still be left with anger and blame, with that aching, wrenching sense of injustice. Diane was right, she realized, and she faced the fact she had been avoiding for years. As she looked at it straight on, it came into clear, ugly focus. She wasn’t only angry at herself. She blamed someone else.

“Why?” she said out loud in a quavering voice. “Why did you allow it? You could have stopped it. You could have changed a hundred, a thousand, things. But you didn’t.”

She let it out then, and the longer she prayed, the angrier she became. She took Him through the hundreds of “what ifs” and “if onlys” she had formulated over the years, brought every thought she had used to accuse herself and laid it this time at His feet.

“Why did you have that old man call? Why did the nurse have to be gone so long? Why didn’t I check? Why did Sam get called to the hospital? Why did the car hit Kelly Bright?” And even as she voiced those accusations, the realization began to dawn that there would be no end of these whys. They would reach back generations and eons. Each question would lead to another and another until there was only a man and a woman in a garden and a forbidden tree. That first poisonous choice had led to the next and the next, beginning a cascade of death and sorrow and destruction that continued until now.

She was weeping. Reliving that horrible day, but it seemed that He was with her this time, here in the car, sitting quietly beside her as the film played once again. She saw each moment from Sam’s telephone call asking her to baby-sit to that moment at the hospital when the doctor had come out and made his speech. Her mind finally came to rest at the obvious place, the place she had avoided all these years. Diane was right. Margaret was never coming back. No amount of blame or sorrow would change that.

I will never leave you or forsake you,
Someone whispered, and she knew that it was true. He had been with her every moment of these last five years. And she also knew, in a way she could not explain, that there would be no answer to the why. She had a choice to make. His presence and love and forgiveness would be enough for her. Or it would not.

She dried her eyes. She prayed then, not really noticing her words, but it reminded her of a good housecleaning, that prayer. She hauled out every hurt and anger, every grief and accusation, and she laid them all out before Him. When she had finished she felt tired, but good and clean inside. For the first time in years. Was every detail where she would have arranged it? Not by a long shot. But now it was well with her soul, and everything else she supposed she could bear.

She drove back toward Asheville and the road toward home, but on impulse she stopped and turned back toward downtown. She parked the car, got out, and retraced her steps. She went back inside The Stitch in Time. She bought the book she had admired, and she bought a piece of fabric, as well. It was nothing like the dainty calicos and stripes she usually worked with. It was a beautiful hand-dyed batik, a kaleidoscope of jeweled slices of color blending into one another. Jungle green and sandy beige and hot sun yellow and flashing orange red, and she thought of Africa with its heat and beauty.

She drove home by the back roads, taking in for the first time in ages the gentle beauty of these mountains. And in a departure from character, she stopped at the pizza place on the edge of Gilead Springs and bought two large combination pizzas for supper. She arrived home just in time to heat them up and make a salad.

After that simple meal, as she and Sam and Elijah were sipping coffee and chatting, she did something even further out of character.

“Would you like to go on an outing with me tomorrow, Elijah?” she asked boldly. He and Sam both looked at her with surprise. “I’ve thought of someplace you might like to see,” she said. “Someplace that hasn’t changed in a long, long time.”

He looked at her, his face still surprised but a slow smile creeping onto it. “I’d like that very much,” he said, and his gaze had an intensity that made her blush.

Sam shifted in his chair, and Elijah seemed to remember his commitments. “But I can’t leave Sam in the lurch.”

“Can you manage by yourself tomorrow, Sam?” Mary asked and was delighted to see a sparkle in Sam’s eyes when he answered.

“Don’t y’all worry about me,” he said, shaking his head with a grin. “I’ll be fine. You two go on and have a good time.”

“Good,” Mary said. “We can leave right after breakfast.”

“I’ll buy us breakfast,” Elijah offered. “That is, if Sam can make do on his own for that, too.”

Sam’s smile became broader. “You kids go have a good time,” he said.

Mary rose up, cheeks burning, and went to get ready for bed. It had been a long, exhausting day. She felt as if she had covered many miles, and she was tired.

Thirty

Wednesday morning Elijah closed his Bible and rose up from the garden bench. The sun was high and bright. The dew was drying, and the sky was blue and cloudless. It would be another clear, hot, dry day. He walked back to put his Bible in the cottage and saw Mary come onto her front porch.

She waved and called to him, “I’m ready whenever you are.”

“I’ll be right there,” he called back. He went into the cottage, set his Bible down on the kitchen table, then closed and locked the door. He felt slightly guilty to be leaving young Samuel alone with his calls and clinic, but he supposed if Sam could do heart surgery on a newborn without being rattled, he could handle whatever this day brought.

He was happy to be going on an outing with Mary, he told himself as he made his way toward the car, but still, the nagging refused to budge. He knew its cause, and it was not guilt over a day of missed work.

He could not stay here forever. The realization was heavy. In fact, whenever Sam decided to return to Knoxville, he would need to find new lodgings, as well. It wouldn’t be proper for him to stay on without someone else here. Not considering his and Mary’s past relationship. And he was still waiting to hear from the mission board.

He thought about all that had happened and wondered what it meant. It still awed him, the fact that he had been led here. He was certain of that, but after that his thoughts became confused. He had been asking the Lord what it all meant, but he was afraid he knew the answer. He had been sent here to help Mary find her way back out of this twisted maze of sorrow and grief. After that he supposed he would return to his calling, and she would return to her life. He felt a sharp pain, but he told himself again that there were no sacrifices in the kingdom of God. It was a privilege to labor for the Master, and the fields were always white with harvest. The only loss would be if he failed to respond to His call.

He set those thoughts aside for now and concentrated on the happy time before him.

Mary came down the porch steps, handed him a picnic basket, and he carefully stowed it on the backseat of her car. She handed him the keys. He helped her in, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Well, for breakfast there’s Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, or Pearlie’s,” Mary said.

“Let’s go to Pearlie’s,” Elijah suggested. It had been there when he had left. He and Mary had eaten there, in fact.

She agreed. They went to Pearlie’s and had a hearty breakfast. “We’re going to Cade’s Cove,” Mary confided as they got back in the car to resume their journey, and Elijah nodded and smiled with pleasure. He remembered it well. It had been years since he had seen that old settlement, and he felt a surge of happiness to walk through that piece of the past again.

He drove them toward the Smokies, his eyes drinking in the sights. The road paralleled the Pigeon River for a while, and even though it was low, he remembered how beautiful it had been—burbling and rushing over its bed of rocks. He identified tulip poplars, maples, gums, buckeyes, and of course, the rhododendrons and laurels and wild honeysuckle were blooming everywhere, their delicate pink and orange and white blossoms dotting the hillsides.

They climbed higher on the winding mountain roads. They passed the Apple Orchard Inn, the River Motel with the line of rocking chairs on the porch. A barbecue stand. A pancake house, scores of cottages, cabins, and bed-and-breakfasts.

Near Cherokee they drove slowly past the shacks selling roasted and boiled peanuts, some of them probably relics from his youth. There was still an old-fashioned roadside attraction—
Feed the Bears!
the sign invited. The road became even more winding, climbed steeper, and their conversation slowed, both of them looking at the scenery. There were hemlock forests here, especially along the river and creek banks, pines and oaks in the dry spots along with sugar maples and birches. He liked the birches especially, their long stately trunks, the papery gray bark, their graceful silver silhouettes.

They drove a while, then he pulled off the road where Mary directed him. There was a lookout point. He opened her door and together they walked to the edge of the bluff. He looked over the panoramic view, the mountains stretching out in either direction, the valley green below him. He glanced down at Mary, very aware of her presence.

She was a little thing, but she was strong. She had on hiking shoes and blue jeans today, and he tried to imagine her beside him in the bush, going from village to village. It wasn’t hard to do, and he wondered why he hadn’t taken her with him to begin with. It just hadn’t seemed right, that was all. He had known, somehow, that it was the Lord’s purpose for him to go alone. He still remembered the deep pain of the night he had told her. The way her face had gone stark and full of confusion as she’d tried to understand. That had been forty-five years ago, but walking beside her now, it felt as fresh as if it had happened last night.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she murmured, and he turned his attention back toward the scenery. Down below he could see the valley spread out beneath them, and he smiled as he picked out Gilead Springs. It was like a picture postcard, that place, a Norman Rockwell painting tucked at the feet of the Smokies. He knew what it looked like in every season of the year. In the fall the hills around it became smudges of gold and red, a fiery backdrop to the velvet patchwork of pastures and farms. In the winter the trees were starkly beautiful with their icy jewelry, the knolls often covered with rime ice, frost, or snow. He had missed this place. Oh, how he had missed it. It felt like an aching in his bones had finally eased, as if he had finally come home to a place he could rest and be quiet.

Gilead Springs was everything Silver Falls used to be before it had changed. A few people lived in town, in tidy houses on the grid of streets surrounding the small square. The judge. The shopkeepers. The sheriff. A few city folk who commuted to Asheville to work and wanted to be close to the paved highway leading to the interstate, he supposed. But most of Gilead Springs’ souls were scattered among these hills and hollows, just as they always had been. All along these ridges and balds were neat little spreads, acres of cabbage and apples and corn, pastures dotted with sheep and cows, tidy fields plowed by well-used tractors. He could see himself on one now, plowing his fields, and he whispered a prayer for a moment, gave it to the Lord, for these pictures and visions were troublesome, at best.

“Have the springs dried up?” he asked Mary.

“Most likely,” she said.

He hoped not. They were everywhere here, up high in these mountains, tucked between the rocky knobs and sheltered by thickets of mountain laurel and oak. The water in them was so clear it shimmered, and when a tired, thirsty visitor stared down to the bottom, past the moss-covered granite, he could see the stream’s life surging out, clean and pure from having been scrubbed through the layers of sand and rock. And oh, the waters were sweet to drink. They would not cause illness. In fact, he had heard it said that those waters would heal.

“You remember Clive Murphy?” Mary asked.

Elijah took a moment to place him, then nodded. He had been an acquaintance, if not a friend. A conniving sort, as he remembered, but he didn’t want to speak ill of the man.

“He had a spring on his land, and he bottled up the water and sold it at a roadside stand.”

Elijah grinned. He could see that.

“Some big company from Asheville came in and wanted to start a whole operation. They were planning to sell it on the Internet.”

Elijah shook his head. “Did he do it?”

“He started to, but when they came out with the big tanker truck and pump, he came to his senses. Ran them off and went back to his cows.”

“He never did have a lick of sense,” Elijah said, and Mary laughed out loud. It was a sweet sound, that laugh, and he vowed to hear it more often.

They turned after a moment and went back to the car, resumed their journey, and Elijah realized he was content.

He saw deer and miles of trees, old weathered barns with rusted metal roofs. He saw a wild turkey and wished he had his gun. He saw rolling hills and rail fences, and everywhere behind them all the bumpy ridge of mountains, reminding him, indeed, of things that never changed.

They reached the Cove and drove slowly through behind the line of other tourists. They stopped the car, got out, and looked around. There was a picnic area, a campground, a ranger station. The air was hot against his face and arms, the sun warm on his head, and a bird called sharply to its mate. They walked up a hard-packed path to the Oliver cabin. Elijah rested his hand on the rough wood of the doorframe as they looked inside the log house, and he could easily imagine the man who had built it, cut down the trees, notched them together, and chinked them, and he had the urge to do something like that himself. To build something stable and real that would be here tomorrow and the next day and a hundred years from now. To stop his wandering, to settle down and be still.

They walked to the side of the road, to the rail fence. He looked across the green valley to the sloping mountainside, bumpy with trees, and the undulating peaks beyond. He was home, he realized, and he felt peaceful, at rest.

“How did you hurt your leg?” Mary asked after a bit, and it struck him again how much they had to catch up on.

“Wrecked my jeep,” he answered. “Broke my leg in three places, and I didn’t follow the doctor’s orders very well.”

She smiled back ruefully. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

They drove some more, stepped onto the paths, and hiked to each of the buildings. They saw the churches, primitive affairs with simple benches and few windows, a hole in the ceiling where the stovepipe had been, and Elijah wondered what kind of eternal business had been transacted here.

They walked through the cemeteries.
Russell Gregory,
one gravestone read,
1795-1864. Founder of Gregory’s Bald. Murdered by North Carolina Rebels
. They read the names. Oliver, Abbot, Brown, Myers, Lawson, Ledbetter.
At home. At rest,
they each testified in variations of wordings.
Was blind but now sees the beauty of heaven. Departed life
.

“You know,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t believe I’m quite ready to join them.” He looked toward Mary, but she was looking at something else. At a small headstone with a lamb carved on the front.
Infant daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Anthony. Born and died June 7, 1926. Sleeping with Jesus. Budded on earth to bloom in heaven
.

He took her hand, covered it with his own. “Don’t be heavyhearted,” he said. She turned her face to his, and it could have been his imagination, but her eyes did not seem as tormented as they had the day before.

They drove, then walked, drove, then walked for several more hours—following each trail under its canopy of pines.

“Let’s eat our lunch on the way home,” Mary suggested, and he readily agreed.

They left the Cove, drove back through the park, and when they were nearly home, in the hills above Gilead Springs, Mary directed him to a turnoff where he parked the car. He helped her out and took the picnic basket from her.

“What have you got in here?” he asked, hefting it with a grin.

“You’ll be glad of it after you’ve climbed a bit,” she answered tartly.

They hiked a ways, and when he saw where she was leading him, he smiled in appreciation. Parson’s Creek was a pretty little stream and still flowing, though he supposed its level was low. It didn’t matter, though.

“There, you see?” she said when they’d hiked through the brush to its source. She pointed down, and he could see the waves and ripples in the pooled water of the cavelike grotto. The spring was still flowing. He knelt down and reached his hand in. It was cold. He cupped it and brought it to his mouth. It tasted sweet and clean.

Mary sat down on a rock beside him. They were quiet for several minutes, then she began that conversation he had known they must have.

“I didn’t know if you were ever coming back,” she said. “I was hurt and angry.”

He nodded silently and sat down beside her. He stared at the ground in front of him, at the minuscule forest of moss that grew on the rock.

“I wrote you every day,” she said.

He raised his face to look at hers. “I only received five of your letters.”

“I never sent the rest.” Her smile was bittersweet, and after a minute she dropped her gaze to the ground.

It wasn’t my choice,
he wanted to say, but it had been.
I wanted to marry you,
he could say, but had he not been the one to call it off?
If I could have chosen,
he thought, but he
had
chosen, had he not? There seemed to be no more to say now than there had been then.

“I suppose if I had been listening, I would have heard the Lord’s cautions before I proposed to you,” he admitted quietly. “But I was distracted.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

“I know that now,” she said. “And I suppose I knew even then, deep inside somewhere, that the decision had been taken out of both of our hands.”

He nodded.

“I waited nearly a year, but there were only four letters from you,” she said. “And they weren’t exactly what I had hoped for.”

He remembered those letters. They’d been deliberate compositions, written with much anguish and care. Telling many facts of his life and work but saying little about matters of their hearts. Above all, making no promises.

“John had been coming around,” she said with a smile. “He was very determined. I wrote you one last time.”

He nodded, remembering that letter almost word for word. He had carried it in his pocket for weeks, had prayed over it and asked God again and again, but knowing, even before the question was asked what the answer was.
Would there be a place for me there?
she had written.
Is there a way I could share in your work without hindering?

He had been wandering in the bush at the time, weeks and months away from the closest mission station. It had been lonely work and dangerous. He had wanted to tell her to come—and do what? his good sense had demanded.
Wait for me here? Take care of our children in this dry, lost land, and perhaps take them home again when you’re widowed and alone?
He had finally composed that last letter by lantern in his tent.