Mercy Me (8 page)

I didn't tell Elijah about the robbery. You do not tell a grieving man any bad news. But I did let him know the W.W.s were taking turns checking on Maude's grave and would keep that up as long as it seemed necessary. I made a mental note to check on the grave myself.

“I'm sorry the Lord didn't answer our prayers about Maude,” I said. “I reckon she just died of old age.”

“I reckon,” he said, quiet like, so I didn't know if he agreed about that or not.

I racked my brain for something more to say, but there was nothing going on that was very uplifting. Then it slipped out. “Pastor Osborne has been taking a lot of brickbats here lately.”

Elijah didn't say anything, and that quiet just got deeper, the way it does when he's rolling something around in his mind.

Well, there was nothing more to be said about that, so I climbed out of the car and got the box out of the backseat.

“I brought you some jars of corn, beans, okra, and the like,” I told him. He thanked me and took the box. We went inside his little dark cook room, and I set the jars on the table. He keeps that cook room cleaner than I keep my kitchen.

We went back outside where it was cooler, and Elijah pointed me to a rickety chair under the shade of the chinaberry tree. Once I was sat down, he parked himself on a bench propped against the tree. I remembered that bench
being up at a school bus stop, all the slats broke out. I'd wondered what had happened to it. Elijah must've dragged it home and fixed it up.

I wanted to speak to him about a tiller and thought I'd warm up to the subject.

“Do you think my garden will make?”

He looked off toward the children. “It won't do much if we don't get rain.”

“That's what I figger.”

We sat there quiet, enjoying a little breeze that whispered in the tree leaves. A June bug was buzzing somewhere. “Any chance we'll get some rain?”

Rubbing his head with the knuckles of his knobby old hand, he said, “Not anytime soon, 'less the Lord takes a notion to give us some.”

The children were squealing and running barefoot, splashing in the water. As we watched them, I figured Elijah knew more about them than he was telling me, and if he did, I needn't to worry. He would see that no harm came to them.

I gave up on talking about the tiller. Elijah's heart was too heavy. And then, too, I figured I might not be able to find one. Besides, he would need a vehicle to haul it in.

“Elijah, you need anything?” Of course, he wouldn't tell me if he did. “You let me know if I can do anything for you. Need a ride to town?”

“No'm.”

Well, I had to go, so I stood up. I was about to get back in the Chevy when he called to me. “Miz Esmeralda, if you get a chance, ask your preacher to pray for us some rain.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked back at him. I knew exactly what he was up to. He wanted me to ask that so the preacher would know he had no hard feelings about Maude, and also, more important than anything, that he still believed in Pastor Osborne's prayers.

On the way home I kept thinking about Elijah asking me to do that. I don't know one white man in Live Oaks who would've picked up on the preacher's feelings and figured out a way to encourage him. It takes a long life of living, living beset with put-downs and downright meanness, to spot the same trouble in another man.

I say Elijah's wisdom goes beyond just knowing how that kind of trouble feels—he knows how to do something about it. I decided that hard knocks alone don't give him that gift; Elijah's wisdom comes from above.

I couldn't wait to get home and call Pastor Osborne. I got him on the first ring.

After I got that done, the next day I made it a point to get back in touch with Beatrice. If she was in a better frame of mind, I had something to tell her that would require my best powers of persuasion. Since she was off work on Friday, I put in the call as soon as I thought she would be up. I knew my phone bill was going to look like the national debt if I kept this up much longer, but I didn't know what that girl would do without me.

As it turned out, I caught her just as she rolled out. Of course, she hadn't slept much because of the noise upstairs, but I didn't jump on that right away. We shot the breeze a few minutes, and then I got down to business.

“Beatrice,” I said, “now you listen to me. I have got a foolproof strategy that will take care of the problem you've got with the neighbors. Take them something to eat.”

“What!” She sounded like she was going to come through the receiver.

“You heard me. Like as not, the wife can't cook, so a dish of something will be a treat they can't turn down.”

“You must be kidding!”

“No, I am not. Make your specialty, that lemon meringue pie. Pile it up high. As soon as they come home from work, march yourself up them steps and knock on the door. Whichever one comes to the door, introduce yourself. If they don't invite you in, give them the pie anyway and suggest in a nice way that they can return the plate when it's convenient. If they ask you to come inside, do. Visit with them a little while, then ask them to come visit you sometime.”

“You must be out of your mind!”

“I am, but so are you, remember?”

“Esmeralda, there is no way in the world I can do that. They come in fighting like the gingham dog and the calico cat! They like as not throw that pie right back in my face.”

“Have you not had a pie throwed in your face before? You will live, I guarantee.”

“No. There is no way in the world I could do that.”

I got very quiet, and I stayed that way a full minute, although every second was costing me.

“Esmeralda? Esmeralda, are you there?”

Before she started clicking the phone and cut us off, I answered. “I'm here.”

“Well, why don't you say something?”

“I did.”

“I know, but—”

“Beatrice, what I've suggested is no big thing. One time not long ago, you said you wished there was something you could do for the Lord. I don't look at it that way, because I try to do everything for the Lord, but if that's your way of thinking, I won't question it. Well, now, here is something you can do for the Lord, and you're balking like a mule.”

“To do for the Lord?” she repeated, and I knew I had scored a bull's-eye.

“That's right. Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbor.' Are those two upstairs your neighbors or are they not?”

“Oh, Esmeralda, I wish you wouldn't put it thataway.”

I sighed loud enough for her to hear. “Do as you like, Beatrice. If you can't do a little thing like that for Jesus, I don't know what to make of you. I got to hang up. This is costing me an arm and a leg.”

That's the way you had to handle Beatrice sometimes—shame her. That poor girl was so timid and so scared, and I knew it would be very hard for her, but it was the right thing to do. I couldn't wait to hear how it turned out. I had a bigger bombshell to land on her once she got over this one.

That night after supper, I went out on the porch, feeling good about what I had accomplished, and I sat on
the glider for a while, enjoying myself. The fireflies were as thick as ever I'd seen them. Reminded me how we children used to catch fireflies and put 'em in a fruit jar to watch 'em light up. All the neighborhood kids would gather outside of an evening and have the most fun playing in the yard—games like Giant Step and so forth. We'd wind up under the streetlight on the corner, telling ghost stories and getting so scared we had to have somebody go with us when we ran home.

Sitting on the glider is where I do my best praying and thinking. I had a lot of both to do that night, and the time slipped up on me. I was about ready to get up and go inside when I saw a woman coming down the street. I didn't see her until she came under the streetlight, but that's when she stopped. I figured she needed to hitch up her pantyhose or something, but she didn't bend over or nothing. It was curious she would stop like that. I craned my neck, trying to see if she was anybody I knew—and I knew nearly every woman in Live Oaks. Well, as I came to think on it, I didn't know one who would be out that late at night by theirselves.

I was real puzzled. She began walking a few steps one way, turned around, and walked a few steps the other way.
She must be lost,
I thought. Then she just stood there. A few cars went by on the street, and when the first one passed, I could see in the headlights that this woman was not dressed right. She didn't have on enough clothes to hide her nakedness!

Well, I don't have to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer to know a thing when I see it. That woman was nothing but a streetwalker!

After discovering that fact, I couldn't go to bed. I watched her hour after hour as she plied her trade, but one car after another whizzed past her. Business was not good, which was a credit to the community.

When she finally gave up and disappeared into the darkness at four o'clock in the morning, I got up, thoroughly disgusted, and went to bed.

As wide awake as the owls hooting in the trees, I lay there thinking what I must do. I decided I would keep this to myself and see how it went. Let one word slip out that there was a prostitute in town and every woman in Live Oaks would lock up every husband or boyfriend they had got. Let them find out for theirselves; I for one was not going to tell a single soul, not even Beatrice, who lived a hundred miles away.

I did tell the Lord, though.

Saturday night, I kept watch again. At about midnight, a white truck slowed down, went around the block, and came back. I knew business was picking up. Whoever it was stopped and looked like he was talking to her through the window. Then the door opened, she got in, and they went on down the street. The truck never came back.

It made my heart heavy knowing that such was going on right under my nose, so it was a relief to get up Sunday morning and go to the house of the Lord. In class I had nothing to say to the W.W.s, and I could tell that made them curious, but I had too much on my mind to bother about them. I hardly heard a word Thelma was teaching.

In the worship service, during the long prayer, Pastor Osborne prayed for rain—not just showers, but for real rain such as we needed, the slow, steady kind that lasts until the ground gets good and soaked. In my heart I said,
Thank you, Jesus.

Well, brother, if I had known what the fallout would be, I never would've asked Pastor Osborne to pray for rain! After church, people didn't hightail it to the all-you-can-eat restaurant but stood around outside, not saying much. But what they did say, they said in a shifty kind of way.

“What in the world is going on?” I asked, but nobody said nothing. Then some little kid piped up, “Preacher Bob prayed for rain.”

“Well, what's wrong with that? We shore need it!”

Clara whispered in my ear but loud enough for others to hear, “Well, what if it don't rain?”

“So what? When you've prayed, have you never had the Lord say no? Mercy me, I have!”

She twisted those thin lips the way she does when she feels she's way ahead. “It's the children, Esmeralda. How do you explain to little children that the Lord don't answer their preacher's prayers? What are they going to think of the Lord, much less Preacher Bob?”

“The Lord can take care of himself,” I snapped. But I wasn't so sure the pastor could, not with all those vultures perched to gobble him up alive.

Mabel Elmwood whispered something in her husband's ear, he nodded, and then she called for everyone's attention. “Our senior elder has something to say.” She
looked up at him like he was Moses come down from Mount Sinai.

Roger Elmwood cleared his throat, and in that politician's voice of his, he said, “Friends, it is the better part of wisdom to pray for rain only in the privacy of one's own closet. That way we don't run into questions when it don't rain. We have a responsibility to those who are weak in the faith, for children and young people who are not yet mature Christians, to avoid creating a problem that could possibly turn them away from the Lord.”

Every one of those fainthearted, pious members standing around either said amen or expressed their agreement by nodding their heads up and down.

I, for one, came right back at him. “Well,” I said, “I think it is the better part of faith to pray for rain in public and bring your umbrella! Splurgeon says faith honors Christ and Christ honors faith.”

Well, then Thelma just had to put her two cents in. “The weather report on Channel 9 says there won't be rain until next month, if then.”

“Have they not been wrong more times than they have been right?” I asked. “I tell you, no weatherman has got God in his pocket. The Lord will do what he wants to do without asking them!”

I got a lot of looks that said “You poor thing” as the crowd took off for the restaurant.

Every day I looked for rain, but it didn't come. And every day the talk about it got bolder. The talk went on over the telephone, in stores, down at the washerette,
the barbershop, and the beauty parlor—everywhere I went. The weather just got hotter and drier, not a cloud in the sky. The only reason the W.W.s didn't let me in on their grapevine was that they didn't want to be caught short if it did rain. Hedging their bets, don't you know. But by Friday it still had not rained, and they couldn't stand it no longer. Two of them came up the walk, and since they'd waited a long time to throw in my face about the preacher praying for Maude and getting no answer, I figured this was the time they would bring it up.

I served them ice tea on the porch. Clara didn't say much; she seemed nervous and mumbled something about how we all of us believe in prayer. Still hedging her bets.

Mabel Elmwood, who is usually quiet until everybody else has had their say and she can tell which way the wind is blowing before she puts in her two cents, had no hang-up about speaking out.